Change of Atmosphere Part 2
by D Squirrel
Summary: Continuation of Change of Atmosphere. Nick is learning to deal with this Grimm thing with a little help from his friends. Warnings: Violence, sarcasm, swearing, Nick whump, mentions of offscreen violence, death, and domestic violence to non major characters, eventual kidnapping, drugging, implied off screen drug use/noncon. No slash. A big, big thanks to Lita for all her help
1. Chapter 1

**_Notes:_** Starts off several weeks after Change of Atmosphere ended. If you haven't read that one…this will probably confused you.

I was halfway through the first chapter when _Leave It to Beavers_ came on (yes, that tells you how slow a writer I am) and I was giggling uncontrollably because they were having dinner! Together! With Juliette. I decided not to change this chapter anyway since this meal is in no way as awkward as that one and sets up some very important things for later chapters.

Once I AU'd how Nick and Monroe met I figured I'd just AU it all. And I'm trying to work in a couple episodes to give it some sort of timeline. _And_ I just can't stop the Nick whump.

**_Warnings:_** Eventual violence, sarcasm, swearing, Nick whump. No slash.

()()()()

It took four rings for him to find and retrieve his phone off the kitchen counter where he'd left it that morning after a long talk with a potential new client. "Monroe."

"Do you like football?"

"Hello to you too, Nick. How have you been?"

"Fooootbaaaall," Nick drawled. "American game. Comes on TV from time to time."

"I know what it is," Monroe snapped peevishly then sighed and gave in. In the weeks he'd known Nick he'd learned that he might as well go along with the crazy and save himself the headache. "Why do you ask?"

"Juliette and I are inviting you over for dinner. If you come over on Sunday we can watch the game too." He paused and Monroe could hear Hank's voice in the background talking to someone else about the likelihood of getting a fingerprint ID back in less than a week. "So, back my question. Do. You. Like. Football."

Monroe admitted, "I've been known to watch it."

"Good. Sunday at three. Game starts at three-thirty."

"I love how you assume I have nothing else planned."

Nick huffed a laugh. "_Do_ you have something else planned?"

"I could," he said defensively. Did actually, but it would be over by noon.

"See you on Sunday, Monroe," Nick said brightly.

"Wait, wait, wait. Tell me what happened with the case."

"I'm sorry, sir," Nick began in a serious tone, "it's against regulations to reveal details of an ongoing investigation—"

Oh my God, the man was _evil_. "Would you just tell me already!"

Nick paused dramatically. "It wasn't the Geiger kid."

"Of course it wasn't!" Monroe said gleefully. "I knew it all along."

"You were blinded by his talent," Nick disagreed. "You think that anyone who plays beautiful music can't be a killer."

"Ha. Totally not true. Good musicians are full of emotion. You need passion to play well and angst. Two things that lead to murder all the time. And by murder I mean spontaneous crimes of passion; not pre-meditated death by rat. Yech."

"Pretty much," Nick agreed wholeheartedly. "I'll see you Sunday."

By Thursday Monroe was wishing he had said no. No, no, very busy, thanks anyway. By Friday he'd talked himself into calling Nick to beg off.

"Oh hey I'm glad you called," Nick said before he could get a word out. "Juliette wanted to talk to you about the menu. Here she is."

"What? No, I—"

"Hello," Juliette said. "I've never made an all vegetarian meal so I wanted to run some recipes by you. Are you a red meat vegi or all meats? Can you get pictures on your phone?"

"Um, yes."

"Okay, I'm sending the recipes to you right…now."

On Saturday he made sure he picked up a bottle of wine that would go well with the recipes he and Juliette had chosen and a six pack of his favorite microbrew because he was determined to get Nick off that _stuff_ the other cops had gotten him hooked on. Also, he thought he might need the alcohol to make it through this.

After some introspection he decided that it might be going back to the Grimm's house. Home territory as it were. He'd helped Nick out on one current case and three old ones his boss had dug up to keep him busy while his partner was taking a couple weeks off for family business, but he'd never gone back to Nick's house. Mostly it had amounted to Nick coming by with sketches of whatever he'd seen for Monroe to identify or just listening while Monroe tried to describe various wesen and their habits.

It wasn't the most ideal system but they were making it work.

By Sunday he was certain dinner at the Burkhardt/Silverton household was the worst idea in the history of worst ideas. A _blutbad_, a Grimm, and whatever Juliette was in this equation. Normal, maybe. Whatever, it added up to…the beginning of a really bad knock-knock joke. He should just call and cancel.

At 2:55pm he rang the bell, chilled wine and beer tucked in his largest insulated tote.

Nick opened the door. His hair was very tidy today, had been since Juliette had come back from her mothers, but he'd forgotten his shoes. "Hey, you made it. Come on in." He shifted aside to let Monroe in. "Are those for me?" he asked with a grin.

"No. This is for you." He handed over the tote. "The flowers are for your girlfriend."

"Fiancé," Nick corrected automatically and out came that proud little smile he got every time he said it. "Speaking of…."

"Hey, I thought I heard the door."

Wow, redhead. Was _not_ expecting that.

"Juliette, _this_ is Monroe. Monroe, Juliette"

"Hi," Monroe stuttered. "Hello. Um, here." He sort of thrust the flowers at her.

"Ohhhh, they're lovely. Thank you. It's nice to finally meet you in person."

She held out her hand and he shook it. She had very small hands. He was terrified he was going to break her.

"Monroe brought me _flowers_," she teased Nick as they made their way to the kitchen.

"He brought me beer," Nick countered, peering into the tote. He pulled out a bottle. "Very fancy beer in very fancy bottles."

"I belong to a co-op," Monroe told him. "And they're for everyone. I'm not promoting a drunk…uh, cop."

Nick grinned, tactfully ignored the near slip. "There are beer co-ops?" He set the wine in the fridge and offered the beer around before putting away the rest. "How have I not heard about this?"

"Oh yeah, I remember reading something about them. It was in the newspaper." Juliette pulled a vase down, standing on her toes to reach into the back of the cupboard.

"I used to have time to read the newspaper," Nick said, faux-mournful, "back when I thought I was insane and didn't have a job. You need any help before I abandon you?" he asked Juliette, hand coming up to touch the small of her back.

"I'm just about done." She pulled a veggie tray out of the fridge, handing it to Nick. "Go entertain your guest. I'll be there in a minute."

"Come on, Monroe." He put the veggies on the coffee table next to a selection of chips and dips. The TV was already on, volume low as the announcers went through their usual spiel. "You want a tour? Pre-game is going to be another half hour at least."

"Sure. I see you finally got the wall painted."

"Two coats of primer. You would not believe how hard it is to cover black Sharpie."

Barefoot, Nick lost a few more inches, his head coming up to Monroe's chin. The slashes and scrapes from that night at the mailman's cabin were nothing more than faint scars now but Monroe still wanted to check him over every time he saw him. It didn't help that Nick had a habit of accumulating bumps and bruises and paper cuts in his every day job. Rarely did he come by Monroe's house without some new injury.

"I can proudly say that I've never had to paint over Sharpie on my walls. What's with all the stuff?" The big dining table was covered in boxes and papers, photo albums and a shoe box full of baby clothes. "You're not solving crime without me, are you?" he asked suspiciously.

"I've been going through boxes." Nick leaned on a chair, gazing over the various stacks. "Things from my parent's house. When they died my social worker had it all packed up and put in storage. I haven't been through most of it since I turned eighteen."

"How much is there?"

Nick sighed. "About twenty boxes. A lot of it is clothes and household stuff. I think the only thing they didn't save was the furniture."

"Wow, that's really cool."

"It is," Nick said with a fond smile. "There's a lot of things in there I'd forgotten about." He pulled a softball-sized glass fishing float out of an open box. "We moved here when I was twelve. I was so pissed about leaving my friends and my school my parents took me to the coast as a shameless bribe for household peace and harmony," he grinned and turned the float over, "and it worked. Dad took us to one of those glass blowing classes you see signs for everywhere. Mom and I failed completely but Dad made this one. Every summer after that we would go a couple times, different town each time, all up and down the coast, and we would come home with one of these for each trip."

"Oh, wow, you have a red one." Monroe reached for it but pulled back before he actually touched. "Red and cranberry are the rarest."

"Mom found that one on the beach when I was fifteen," Nick said. "You can pick it up if you want."

Oh, he _wanted_ to. Gently he lifted it out of the packing peanuts and bubble wrap. "Green is the most common color because so many were made in Japan from old nihonshu bottles. That's _sake_ to you and me. Reds are highly prized because they were often colored with real gold." He turned the float over with the utmost care. "And see the FF here. The stylized letters mean it's one of the later versions but this mark is one of the most sought after by collectors. You should get those appraised and add them to your homeowner's insurance."

"You know a _lot_ about fishing floats," Nick said.

Monroe recognized that bright look in his eyes. Damned Grimm was laughing at him. "We live two hours from the coast. How do you _not_ know this?"

Nick shrugged and put down the float he was holding. "I can tell you a lot of things about guns and sports and cars. Antique fishing floats, not so much."

"You should put these out, they're beautiful." Monroe gently, gently replaced the float.

"Maybe," Nick said softly. He ran a hand over the curve of red glass.

"I thought Monroe was getting a tour," Juliette said, poking her head in the room. "Hey, are you going to put those out? You should set them up in the bedroom. They'll be safer up there."

"You don't mind?" Nick asked.

"Of course not. Put out anything you want." She started to withdraw into the kitchen then paused. "Except that chartreuse shag bathroom rug I saw in there," she added. "That thing is just hideous."

Nick laughed. "Hey, that rug could hold beloved memories for me."

"Then we wouldn't want our dirty feet on it would we." She shot Nick a saucy look and disappeared.

"I like her. She's spunky."

Nick gave him a stern look. "No licking the fiancé."

Monroe pointed an offended finger. "Hey, the licking was a one-time stress response to a traumatic event because I was _worried_ about your health."

"You did it twice."

"I can't believe you're bringing that up. Not cool, dude."

"Whatever. I got over it and so can you. Come on I'll show you the upstairs." Nick picked up the box and led the way. "And who says spunky anymore?"

He _knew_ Nick didn't have a clue what kinds of things it did to a _blutbad_ to be invited into a potential predator's territory and then invited to _explore_. He saw the bedrooms, the bathrooms, the backyard, and gradually the knot that had gripped his gut since Thursday eased under the gentle patter of small talk. Nick was good at conversation, made it easy.

"It's big for just the two of us," Nick said as they headed back down the stairs. "But we got an amazing deal and who knows someday we may need the room."

Juliette was on the couch when they got back, beer in hand, feet tucked up. "Get the grand tour?"

"You have a great house," Monroe told her. "It's got character."

"Too much sometimes," Nick said with a smile. "We've had to redo half the wiring. Luckily Juliette's brother does construction. He gives us the family discount." He dropped onto the couch next to Juliette, reaching for a chip.

By half time Monroe had relaxed enough he was looking forward to the veggie lasagna he'd been smelling for the last forty minutes. It helped that Nick and Juliette were trying a little too hard to make him feel welcome. He liked knowing he wasn't the only one who was nervous.

"It's an experiment," Nick warned, retrieving the pan from the oven, sliding it onto a trivet in the middle of the kitchen table. "We've never tried this recipe before." He tugged off the matching set of monkey potholders making a face when Monroe gave him an amused look because, really, _monkeys_.

"They were a gift," Nick said defensively, tucking the potholders into a drawer.

"Aw, don't let him pick on you, hon." Juliette kissed his cheek as she walked by with a bag of croutons. "I love your monkeys."

"That," Nick pointed a finger at Monroe, "is _not_ a euphemism."

Monroe held up both hands. "I was just thinking that it must have been your keen fashion sense that first attracted Juliette."

"Ha, ha."

"The lasagna smells great," Monroe changed the subject and Juliette smiled at him behind Nick's back. It felt weird sitting while the two of them fussed over drinks and napkins and the green salad. Weird, but nice.

He was halfway through a plate of what turned out to be very good lasagna when Juliette delicately wiped her mouth with her napkin and said, "So Nick told me that you're a…_blutbad_? Am I saying that right?"

Monroe swallowed hard. "Um, yes, _blutbad_." He glared at Nick who was forking up lasagna with a _butter wouldn't melt in my_ mouth look. A little warning would have been _nice_.

"It's my fault," Juliette said. "I forced it out of him."

"It's true," Nick said earnestly. "The city ought to hire her to interrogate suspects."

"I just know which buttons to push," Juliette said with a sly smile.

Nick protested, "I was on pain medication. Heavy duty narcotics. For terrible, debilitating injuries received while rescuing small children. "

Juliette patted his hand consolingly. "Sure you were, honey."

"Hey, Monroe was there. He can vouch for my debilitating injuries."

Monroe put down his wine glass. "Well, I wouldn't say debilitating. It _was_ just your head."

"If I'd known you two were going to gang up on me I wouldn't have introduced you," Nick complained but he was trying really hard not to smile when he said it.

Monroe shook his head, grinning and ready to reply when he was distracted by the heavy squeal of truck brakes outside and the thump of boots on the sidewalk. "Someone's at your door," he said just as the doorbell rang.

Juliette popped up out of her chair before Nick could do more than put down his fork. "I've got it."

"I'm glad you were able to come," Nick said when they were alone. "Juliette despairs for me having nothing but cops for friends." Pushing his chair back he went to the window, twitching aside the curtain to peer out.

Monroe could hear Juliette's shoes clicking down the hall, the door opening, voices. "I don't know if I'm really an improvement on that," he said watching Nick. "What's wrong?"

Nick glanced back at him, jaw and shoulders tense. "Nothing. It's nothing." But he didn't move until the door closed and Juliette's shoes announced an unhurried return. Then he scooted back to his chair. "Someone's been watching the house," he said just as Juliette walked back into the room.

"Nick, the delivery guy needs to see your ID and have you sign for the package."

"They're delivering on Sunday?"

"Apparently." Juliette sat back down, replacing her napkin on her lap.

"Huh. Okay. Be right back."

Monroe listened to his footsteps thunder up the stairs to the bedroom and back down. After a minute he came back into the kitchen carrying a cardboard FedEx envelope. "Do we know anyone in White Sulphur Springs Montana?"

"I don't think we know anyone in Montana period," Juliette said. "Who's it from?"

"Al's Multi-Storage and More. Huh. Maybe it's something for work." He tossed the envelope on the counter.

Monroe waited until he was back in his chair then burst out. "Getting back to someone _watching_ _your_ _house_? You can't just drop that into the conversation and not finish the story."

Juliette glanced at Nick. "I came home early last week and there was a pickup parked across the street. They were taking pictures of the house. When I went outside they took off."

"Did you get a look at them?" Monroe asked. "Wait, you went _outside_?"

Nick looked at her, validation all over his face.

"I wanted to see what they were doing," Juliette defended stoutly but a little sheepishly. Obviously she realized what she'd done wasn't wise but Nick must have been giving her a hard time about it so she wasn't going to admit to it. "I got their license plate number."

"And…?" Monroe prompted.

"It's registered to an address on Lovejoy off the 403," Nick said, clearly reluctant.

Monroe stared at him. "Annnnnd…?"

"And nothing." Nick shrugged. "They checked out clean. No priors. Guy has a wife and two kids. No record except for two parking tickets over three years."

"I don't think they were professionals," Juliette added. "They were driving this really old truck in the most memorable color you could find and they had a plain digital camera like you'd get at Wal-Mart for sixty dollars."

Monroe could tell Nick wanted to drop it, he figured they had been arguing about it from the looks shooting back and forth between the two, so he let it go. For now. He made a mental note to pin Nick down someday soon and have a long conversation about why most Grimm's were loners and drifters. And home security, pfffaw. They didn't even have an alarm system.

"Who wants dessert?" Nick said, getting up before he finished the last word. "Half time is almost over."

The second half of the game was a wash. They were making fun of the commercials more than they were watching the game which was fun but Monroe was bored, bored, bored.

"You look bored," Nick said stretching out a leg to poke him in the thigh with his bare toes.

Juliette had abandoned them half an hour ago, claiming female prerogative to avoid all televised sporting events.

Monroe finished his third glass of wine and shook his head because he was good guest who remembered at least some of the social niceties his mother had drilled into him.

"Yeah me too," Nick said as if he'd agreed. Rolling his head in Monroe's direction he added, "Want to dig through some more case files?"

Yes, yes, YES! "Sure, okay. If you're not into the game."

Nick rolled his eyes and heaved himself up from the couch. "Come on then."

"So what exactly are you looking for in all this?" he asked as they pushed aside boxes of clothes and kitchen wares to make room on the dining table.

"Papers, letters, photos, official documents." Nick had switched to ice water after his last beer and he paused to take a sip. "You said that Grimmness is inherited and I didn't inherit mine until a few months ago. Which means it didn't come from my parents. I must have had at least one family member I didn't know about. There could be more." Wiping a condensation-wet hand on his thigh, he grabbed a stack of folders from the sideboard. "Maybe one of them knows what this is all about."

"I don't think Grimmness is actually a word."

"It's totally a word."

Monroe scowled at him. "Find it in the dictionary."

"I'll bet you're a barrel of laughs at Scrabble," Nick said, glancing up with a smirk to show he was teasing.

"You may borrow my official, leather-bound Scrabble dictionary any time," Monroe said loftily. "If you treat it nicely."

Nick looked at him solemnly. "It's engraved isn't it?"

"No," Monroe denied.

"Embossed."

"No."

"Liar."

He so was. "It was a gift. Like you're creepy monkey potholders only not creepy."

"The monkeys are adorable."

"Adorkable you mean."

"Now that," Nick said, pointing at him with a pencil, "is not a word." He spread a file out in front Monroe and pulled another chair over close. "This one…is a double homicide from late last year. Bodies found in a park on the edge of the city. Cause of death was asphyxiation. Coroner noted severe bruising of the ribs and additional crushing injuries as if the victims had been squeezed by something large."

"How large?"

"She notes similar bruising has been documented on small animals attacked by constrictor snakes." Nick made a face. "Is that even possible?"

"Oh my neophyte Grimm," Monroe drawled in his best menacing voice. "The things I must teach you."

Three files later Juliette came to the doorway, leaning against the frame. "Hey, you two. I'm heating up leftover lasagna for dinner."

Monroe looked at the window surprised to see it had gotten dark. He remembered Nick getting up to turn on the light at some point but it hadn't seemed that long ago. "Wow, I should go."

"Nah, you should stay for dinner," Nick said. So he did.

It was after eight when he got home. He puttered around the house, did the dishes and a load of laundry, cleaned up a little. Leaning against the counter while he waited for water to heat for a cup of tea before bed, he realized that his cheeks were sore from smiling and he'd had a really good time.

The phone woke him in the middle of the night. The display was too bright and he squinted at it until he could read the name on the caller ID and time. Burkhardt. 1:58am.

His heart thudded a little too hard. Nobody called at two in the morning for a happy reason. "Nick? What's wong?"

"It's Juliette." There was a lot of background noise, people talking, her voice echoed through the phone. She sounded like she'd been crying or trying really hard not to cry. "Someone broke into the house."

"What? Are you alright?" Sitting up, he turned on the lamp.

"I'm fine but Nick—" She sucked in a shaky breath. "I'm at the hospital."

"I'm on my way. Which hospital?"

TBC

_**More Notes:**_ I know, I know, evil cliffhanger. Bad squirrel. I'll just say, the person who broke in…. It's not who you think.


	2. Chapter 2

_**Notes:**_I blame online translators for all my wesen names. It's _addictive_.

_**Warnings:**_Language, violence, illness, Nick-whump, ummm….creepy flannel-loving volunteer hospital staff. Mentions of domestic violence and off screen deaths as related to past crimes.

()()()()

It was the same hospital Nick had been in last time with the same flannel-loving woman at the desk. This time she had pink hair tips and cherry red fingernails and when she saw him her eyes lit up in a way that made him happy he already had the room number from Juliette.

There was a cop in uniform standing in the hall and another by the door to Nick's room. Both were wesen, which he didn't think was coincidence. Both woged as soon as they got a whiff of him and Monroe was in no mood to put up with that but he sucked it up and brought out his manners instead of his claws (his sponsor would have been so proud). They weren't going to let him past but Nick's partner came out of the elevator just as he was digging out his phone to have Juliette to come vouch for him.

"Did Juliette call you?" Hank asked, leading the way down the hall. He still had his coat and scarf on and a duffle bag in one hand.

"She said someone broke in." Monroe looked through the window. The blinds were half open and he could see Nick's head above the blankets and Juliette sitting beside the bed. "Is Nick alright?" There was no team of doctor's hovering over the bed which he took as a good sign.

"I just got here myself. Last I heard the doctors were running more tests."

Juliette spotted them through the window and got up. A wave of heat followed her out of the room, momentarily overwhelming the coolness of the hallway. She was wearing dress slacks, fuzzy puppy slippers, and what had to be one of Nick's too-big-in-the-shoulders P.P.D. sweat-shirts. "Did you catch her?" She was flushed and sweating, hair sticking to her face, and she looked like she really needed a hug.

If she'd been _blutbad_ Monroe wouldn't have hesitated. But she wasn't, she was human and fragile and he was desperately glad Hank stepped in to put his free arm around her shoulders and pull her against his chest. "Not yet," Hank said. "Captain has every cop in the city looking for her. We'll get her."

"I know you will." She nodded her head against his shoulder. "Monroe," She detached from Hank only to wrap both arms around him. "Thank you for coming."

"Oh, okay, we're hugging," he said awkwardly. It had been so long since he'd done this he has no idea where to put his hands. A discreet sniff brought him exhaustion, sweat, last night's lasagna, faded minty toothpaste, Hank and Nick most strongly, a couple other people who had touched her, a whiff of cold that was completely out of place with the heat pouring off her, but no pain and no blood-smell. Relieved, he patted her back gently. "You're okay."

Pulling back, Juliette pushed the hair off her face. "I'm fine. Nick shot her before she touched me." She glanced back at the window. "I think…I think she was a wesen. She did something to Nick. The doctor's don't know what. I thought you might."

Monroe shot a look at Hank. He had no idea how much Nick had told him, but there was no surprise on the other man's face. "You saw her?"

"I saw _something_."

"Describe her," Hank prompted.

"Small." She held a hand up about her shoulder height. "White hair. Pale skin. Really sharp teeth." She took a deep breath. "She had her hand on Nick's arm and it was like…you know that saying the lights are on but no one is home? That's what his eyes looked like." She pressed a hand to her mouth for a moment then curled her fingers into a fist against her chin.

"She just touched him. Nothing else."

"Not that I saw. And we were only separated for _maybe_ thirty seconds."

"I need to—" Smell him. He gestured towards the room, unwilling to say it out loud. In the hallway. In front of people.

"You'll want to take off your coats," Juliette warned. "They're trying to keep him warm."

"Warm?" Hank asked as she opened the door.

Warm was a _colossal_ understatement The Sahara was a _warm_; this was like leaning over an open oven door after cooking a pizza.

Nick was cold. He _smelled_ like cold. Not like soft, golden, winter mornings or crisp, clean snow, but like stale, rotting ice at the dead middle of the season when winter stretched on and on and warm summer days were so far away they seemed a dream. The creature stink was on him too but it was faint and hard to find among the hospital smells.

Juliette took the duffle from Hank and disappeared into the bathroom leaving the Detective to stare at him while he sniffed and snuffled and generally relived Nick's entire evening through his nose. She came out in a tank top and track shorts, hair pulled back. She looked cooler already and Monroe's heavy flannel was envious. "Thanks, Hank. I wanted to ride in the ambulance so I had, like, a minute to get dressed," she explained to Monroe.

"No problem," Hank said. "Just don't tell Nick I had to rifle through your unmentionables drawer. I'll never hear the end of it."

"You know," Monroe mused, "they say that even unconscious, a person can still hear _everything_ that happens around them."

"You're totally making that up," Hank accused.

Monroe pretended deep absorption in the monitors around Nick's bed.

Juliette took the chair on the other side of the bed, leaning forward to rub a hand over Nick's shoulder through the blankets. "They're treating him for hypothermia. They wouldn't believe me that he hadn't been anywhere cold." She took a deep, shuddering breath. "We just got out of bed and went downstairs. He didn't even go outside. She just…put her hand on his arm."

Monroe dug under the heated blankets until he located an arm. It was sweltering under there but the chill of Nick's skin was giving him goose bumps. The handprint was white, like frost had settled on his skin, and blue as bruises. The creature smell was stronger there and so was the cold.

He really wished Nick would wake up. A better description than _really sharp teeth_ would be helpful.

"Can you help him?" She was worrying a thumbnail between her teeth, watching with an expression so expectant and hopeful Monroe's stomach twisted hard. It hadn't been too long ago Nick had looked at him with that same quietly desperate expression. Apparently he couldn't refuse either of them.

"I'll make a couple calls. I'm not _promising_ anything, but I'll see what I can find out."

By five o'clock he was running low on cell phone minutes and patience. He had to repeatedly remind himself that he should be polite to the people he was waking up in the dark of the morning. It wasn't their fault he didn't have specifics. "Thanks, man. Let me know if you come up with anything else." He slapped the phone down with a loud snap then winced and looked over at Juliette curled up asleep in the chair on the other side of the bed.

Seventeen species of wesen fit the description she had given. Nick's symptoms narrowed it down to five. Really it was amazing how many wesen could hypnotize _and_ send their victims into a slumber _as deep and cold as death_, and if he heard that phrase one more time he was going to _burn_ every damn fairy tale book with a sleeping princess in it.

Ha, sleeping princess. He was soooo remembering that for later when Nick was…well, awake to appreciate it the joke.

Five possibilities and five remedies for the unnatural slumber they induced. Unfortunately the cures weren't something they could just experiment with and hope they worked without some serious side effects. Like death.

Rubbing his hands over his face he scrubbed his eyes and looked at Nick. They had switched him from nasal cannula to oxygen mask an hour ago. There was talk of bringing in a machine that would remove, warm, and recirculate the blood from another hospital.

"This would be so much easier if you would just wake up," he said softly.

Nick made a sound in the back of his throat, shifting a little. Being talked too made him restless, but he hadn't yet come all the way awake. He twitched his head into the pillow, worry lines forming on his forehead.

Monroe sighed and smoothed them away absently. "Why do I get the feeling you've never done anything the easy way?" There was a lot more he wanted to say about expectations and how Nick needed to explain to his fiancé that Monroe _wasn't_ a good guy and she shouldn't trust him with important things like Nick's _life_. He was _terrified_ he was going to fail and that by failing he was going to prove his own father's expectations right.

The temperature on the display beeped and dropped to 94.6.

Enough of this. He couldn't sit here and wait for something to happen. Writing a quick note he slipped it onto the table next to Juliette and sought out the blessed coolness of the hallway. He'd stripped down as much as he could but the room was a sauna and sometime in the last hour he'd seriously begun to consider begging a pair of scissors off the desk nurse and making cut-offs out of his favorite jeans.

He ran into Hank downstairs, looking exhausted and carrying a travel-tray of coffee cups and a white paper bag. "Anything?" Monroe asked hopefully.

Hank shook his head. "If she was as badly injured as Juliette thought she was could be she might have crawled off and died somewhere."

"Ha. Unlikely." Monroe sniffed in the direction of the coffee and was rewarded with a cup and Hank's chuckle at his grabby hands. "This isn't half bad," he said with some surprise when he was able to stop drinking for more than a breath.

Hank smirked. "Glad you like it. Where are you headed?"

Irritation boiled back up. "I'm going to go track down the…_whatever_ it was and squeeze her head until she tells us how to cure Nick," Monroe growled.

"Can you do that?"

"I don't know." He shrugged and sipped his coffee. "But trying is better than sitting here."

"Sounds like a plan. Let me get someone to take this up and I'll come with you." He grabbed one of the uniforms walking by. "You can tell me how you plan to accomplish that on the way. I'm driving."

"I have my own car," Monroe protested as they walked through the automatic doors. He'd watched the sun come up through the window in Nick's room; it shouldn't have been a surprise to walk into daylight, but it was. And bright. Really, really bright.

"Yeah, but I have a siren and a cool flashy light."

Monroe had to admit he had a point there. "Can I run the siren?"

There was a police car down the block from Nick's house; they passed it on the way by. Hank paused for a quick word before they parked and headed up the sidewalk. The front door was closed but swung opened when Hank pushed on it. The knob had been ripped almost completely out of the door.

"Captain's sending over the crime scene cleanup crew this afternoon to get the blood out," Hank told him, giving the knob a rattle. It fell off the door. "And there's a locksmith coming later."

Monroe added really fucking _strong_ to his mental list of the attacker's characteristics.

Hank picked up the knob, laying it on the little three sided table in the corner by the door. "Apparently she came in through this door and went straight for the living room. Juliette said that Nick heard the noise downstairs."

Monroe nodded. He'd heard the story from Juliette. Nick had made her wait on the stairs while he went in to investigate and promptly gotten snared. Juliette had seen him drop his gun and gone in after him, then gone after the wesen with her flashlight—which was so, so stupid but had, Monroe reluctantly agreed, probably saved Nick's life.

"What exactly are we doing here?" Hank asked.

Monroe paused in hall. "What has Nick told you about…?" he waved a hand around, searching for a good word.

"You mean the Grimm thing?"

"I guess that answers my question right there."

Hank shut the door behind them, shoving hard to get it to stay closed. "He told me you weren't entirely human and that he could see the differences but I can't."

Monroe shot him a squinty-eyed look. It was baffling how blasé he was being. "And that doesn't bother you."

Hank chuckled dryly. "Play twenty questions with Nick sometime." He shrugged and flipped on a light switch for the hall. "He's always seen more than the rest of us. I got used to _that_ years ago."

"Still," Monroe insisted. "Most people are pretty freaked when they find out the monster under the bed are real." The scent was stronger in here. She'd walked around, taken her time, touched things.

"My fourth case when I became a detective," Hank began thoughtfully, feeling around the inside of the wall for another light switch, "was a missing fifteen year old girl. This was back when I was in property crimes but it was all hands on deck for a missing kid. It was a nice neighborhood, nice people. The kind of place that still shuts down the street and has block parties on the Fourth of July."

Monroe eyed him warily. "This doesn't sound like it's going to have a happy ending." On the floor there was a long-handled, metal flashlight next to evidence marker #13 and a few drops of blood. Huh, he thought they only did that sort of thing on TV shows.

"We found her body. Shallow grave in the woods behind the house. Ex-boyfriend eventually confessed. She broke up with him. He decided if he couldn't have her no one else would either. Same old story."

"That's really…depressing."

"Oh, that's not even the worst thing I've seen," Hank said. "A sixteen year old kid killing his girlfriend because he was a selfish little shit. Not even in the top ten. Maybe he was creature, maybe he wasn't." He shrugged. "Doesn't matter to the dead girl one way or the other. Hair color and height aren't what make a person evil. I can't imagine fur and claws do either."

Monroe just stared at him for a second. "Wow, that's, um, really enlightened and yet incredibly disheartening at the same time."

Hank laughed. "Welcome to my life. I won't say finding out about wesen was not just about the most unsettling thing I've ever dealt with—and I have four ex-wives so that's saying something—but it's also not the weirdest thing I've heard either. _Everyone_ has a deep dark secret they hide away from the world, at least yours isn't some kinky sex thing."

Monroe pulled his jaw up from where it had dropped with a click. What could he say to _that_?

Hank grinned at his flummoxed expression and reminded him, "You never explained why we're here."

Turning his attention back to the room, he said, "I need a better scent than what I got off Nick to track with. Too many people and hospital smells interfering." He poked around a bit more. The air in here was heavy with blood. There was a spatter of it across the floor, the glass table, a larger trail heading for the door. Cordite, because with the wesen distracted by Juliette whacking her with the flashlight, Nick had been able to get to his gun and get off a shot. Sweat. Fear. A chalky smell that he figured must be the fingerprint powder that was on every flat surface. A dozen cops and techs and all their attendant perfumes, soaps, shampoos, and detergents.

That cold scent was everywhere. On drawers, the bookcase, the storage baskets tucked into the nook along the wall. "She wasn't here to kill Nick. Or at least not _just_ to kill Nick. She was looking for something."

"What?"

"I don't know." Monroe shook his head, frustrated with the crisscrossing scents. He hadn't done this for a long time. "She was all over the room." He sneezed violently. His sinuses were going to be unhappy tomorrow.

Hank poked through the open drawers on the sideboard with the air of a man not really expecting to find anything useful. "That explains why she didn't go straight upstairs."

"I've got her scent now." Monroe sneezed again. "Let's see where it leads."

If this didn't pan out he was going to that house on Lovejoy and shake someone until they came up with a good explanation as to why they were stalking his Grimm. Might be related, might now. He'd planned to wander by there at some point in the next week or so anyway, give them a little _wrath of blutbad_ action; that plan might get advanced to _right now_.

There was no convenient line of blood drops to follow but the scent hung in the air, claret red and thick and easy to follow as a trail of flashing neon arrows. Across the yard, over the neighbor's fence, down the street. He walked fast, shifting through the myriad of smells. Cat. Cold scent mixed with the heat of wesen blood. Paper boy, hours ago. Vehicle with a failing catalytic converter, stinky. Jogger. Mmmm…she smelled good. Wet leaves. Ewww—garbage truck. That was just _unpleasant_.

"You okay?" Hank asked.

"Yeah." He coughed a couple times. "Geh. That's not going away anytime soon." Eucalyptus and goldenseal for him tonight or he wouldn't be able to breathe through his _nose_ tomorrow. "She went in there."

Hank looked at the patch of forested park across the street and sighed. "Figures." He loosened his gun in its holster. "Let's go."

It wasn't a large park but the tightly packed trees and thick swathes of moss made it _seem_ bigger. The light and street noises faded once they were past the first row, senses overwhelmed in winter-chilled earth and evergreen and wet.

Hank kept trying to move in front of him, which Monroe found kind of charming until the third time they tripped over each other. Must be a cop thing; he was just as bad as Nick. _Blutbaden_ could take care of themselves in the woods, thank you very much.

"I see what Nick means now," Hank muttered, catching a branch for balance the third time they ran into each other.

"What? What is that supposed to mean?"

Hank gave him a bland smile. "Nothing."

Monroe squinted at him suspiciously but let it go. For now.

"There's not much blood," Hank commented after Monroe found a couple of splotches of it on a rocky outcropping. He toed at a bit of bloody cloth with his boot.

"Wesen heal fast. Some more than others." He poked around; found a few long white hairs caught in the rock. "She rested here for several hours."

"How long ago did she leave?"

"Not long. Ten minutes. Maybe less."

Hank looked around the clearing again. "Doesn't this strike you as weird? If she's mobile, why is she still here? She has to know she broke into a cop's house and that everyone with a badge is going to be looking for her."

"I did sort of expect the trail to go straight to her getaway car," Monroe admitted.

Hank nodded agreement. "Which way?"

They came out the other side of the park and headed across the street. By now it was past six o'clock, traffic was starting to pick up.

"Son of a—this is the back of Nick's block," Hank exclaimed. "She's circling back to the house."

"That's exactly where she's headed," Monroe said and pointed out a flash of white ducking into the bushes down a partially overgrown alley.

"Whatever it is she's after must be damned important." Hank pulled out his cell phone. "I'm calling in help."

"Hey, hey, back up a minute." Monroe tried to be tactful. "I know you guys like to bring the whole department along for the ride, but before you go calling in the cavalry, we need to be careful here. Someone gets trigger happy and we lose any chance to help Nick."

Hank gave him a _look_ but asked quite mildly, "What do you suggest?"

"First we need to cover up as much as possible," Monroe told him. "She infected Nick through touch so, yeah, we should avoid that. Second, stealth over shock and awe." He watched the pale shape disappear behind a fence. "Third, don't look in her eyes. Juliette said they were staring at each other so it's a good bet that's how she hypnotizes or whatever." He looked back in time to see Hank raise an eyebrow at him.

"Anything else?" Hank asked sardonically.

Monroe had never met anyone who did sardonic as well as Hank. "No, no I think that's about it."

"You want to hear my plan now?"

There was a _plan_! "You didn't say anything about a plan."

"You didn't exactly give me a chance."

"Oh," Monroe said awkwardly. "Sorry. Nick usually just sort of," he flailed a hand, "wings it."

Hank grinned. "I hear you there, man. How about we give this a try instead?"

TBC

Thanks to everyone who waited around and to those who took the time to review. You have no idea how much it means to us writers to know that your story moved someone to take a few seconds to type something even if it's just one or two words.


	3. Chapter 3

_**Notes:**_Super long chapter to make up for the evil cliffhanger last week.

_**Warnings:**_Language. H/C. Angst. Nick whump.

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Monroe was in the cafeteria trying to decide between the two vegetarian dinner options when Nick woke up. Lunch had been tasty enough that he was reluctantly surrendering his long held beliefs that all hospital food was actually a form of overpriced torture and was actually looking forward to trying the dinner possibilities. He had just taken his receipt when his cell phone chirped a new text message alert. _He's awake_.

Hastily scooping up the tray he hurried to the elevator, catching it just before the doors closed. Nick was asleep again by the time he got there, bed propped up, pale against the sheets but still looking _better_. He handed over Juliette's chicken Caesar salad and Dr. Pepper with a questioning look.

"They did some quick tests," she said, keeping her voice low. "There's no sign of permanent damage."

Nick had stopped breathing at six thirty-three this morning but the staff had been prepared and they'd had him on the ventilator in moments. The doctors had been optimistic. That was the very word they had used. Optimistic. But there was no way to know how much damage had been done until Nick woke up and _talked_ to them.

Monroe sagged into the chair in relief, hastily righting the tray before he dumped his own dinner. "That's _great_ news."

She smiled at him and Nick and the world in general. "Thank you for the food. This smells _really_ good."

Monroe watched her eat a few bites before turning his attention to his own meal. She hadn't had much of an appetite at lunch and had missed breakfast altogether. He was ridiculously pleased that he had chosen something she liked following her less than explicit request for _whatever looks good_.

Daintily forking up a hunk of chicken she said, "They're going to keep him overnight. They want to do some more tests tomorrow morning but if those turn out well he'll be able to go home in the afternoon. I'm going to head home when visiting hours are over." Running a hand through her hair she grimaced. "Take a shower."

Monroe frowned. The cleanup crew had been and gone and the locksmith had fixed the door but he didn't like the idea of Juliette alone in the house. His expression must have said as much because she rolled her eyes and said around a mouthful of chicken, "I'll be fine. You and Hank are big, overprotective nursemaids."

"With good reason," he pointed out. "The woman was looking for something in your house. Someone else might be looking for it too."

"That's what Hank said. Which is why," she added, "he's going to stay over. So you don't have to worry."

He would still worry, but less knowing that. Monroe finished eating, said goodbye and headed home, took a long shower and slept hard for a couple hours. By nine thirty he was back at the hospital with a thermos full of coffee and the latest issue Horological Times.

The hall outside Nick's room was empty. With the wesen in custody the guards had been removed. Technically visitor's hours were ended but the staff seemed to have assumed that because Monroe had been seen with the cops he was a cop as well. He walked in with no trouble at all, which was a little disturbing to his peace of mind.

He took the chair on the other side of the bed. It was the most comfortable and more importantly it faced the door. He set the thermos on the little table, placed his travel mug next to it and laid the magazine next to that. The thermos came with a cup but he hated using it; metal ruined the flavor of the coffee. Pouring a mug he settled back in the chair and took a sip,—oh yeah, that was the good stuff—reached for his magazine—and nearly dropped it on the floor when he realized Nick was awake and watching him.

"Geeze, give a guy some warning." He pressed a hand to his heart, feeling it slamming in his chest. "It's not good for a man's heart to have a Grimm staring at him."

"Sorry," Nick said but there was a grin in his hoarse voice.

Monroe let it go with no more than a narrow eyed look. Guy was in the hospital after all. He handed Nick the cup of water off the table. "How are you feeling?"

Nick considered. "Okay. Kinda tired."

"Dude, you sound like you've been eating gravel."

Nick made a face. "Yeah, well, you try having a tube shoved down your throat and see how you sound."

Monroe didn't want to think about tubes and ventilators and _life_ _support_. Returning in triumph, evildoer locked up, cure in hand, they had walked into the stiflingly hot room to find Nick intubated and surrounded by machinery.

"Juliette head home?" He tipped his head a bit, looking for her like she might be hiding behind the lamp.

"A little while ago."

Nick frowned. "Alone?"

He could _see_ the gears turning in Nick's head, slowly though, because he was still pretty out of it. "No. Hank's staying over."

A small nod. "Yeah, yeah, I remember now. She told me that." He freed his other hand from the blankets to rub at his forehead. "Sorry. Still a little fuzzy."

"It's okay, man." Monroe smoothed the blankets back down. "You're lucky to be alive." If Nick had been a slightly better shot or the wesen had left town immediately rather than come back to the house….

"Juliette hit her," Nick said, muzzily proud. "Right upside the head with a flashlight."

"I saw the bruises."

He bit his lower lip, thinking. "I couldn't move. Couldn't even think about moving." He shook his head and sipped at the water then eased back into the pillow. "What was she?"

"_Eishexe_," Monroe said eagerly. "An honest to God _ice witch_. Right here in Portland. I mean, it's sort of implied—okay, okay, sure with that name it's an easy assumption that they like cold, but really they like it warm. Seriously. Dry and warm. And while they _are_ faster and stronger than a human, _and_ they have this whole creepy hypnotic-eyes thing going on, their real weapon is what got you."

One eyebrow rose. "What was it exactly that _got_ me?"

"Poison. Of a sort. They make it themselves. I imagine the recipe is passed down through the family along with grandma's jewelry and the good china."

Nick made a face. "Now I'm picturing something like the Necronomicon recipe book, which is a really unpleasant thought."

"Probably pretty close," Monroe agreed and gave a little shudder. "Lucky for you they build up immunity to it so their blood—which we risked life and limb to retrieve by the way—can be turned into a cure with a little work."

Turned out Hank had a well-hidden devious streak which he'd put to work persuading the _eishexe_ to give them the antidote while Monroe had threateningly lurked in the background. People were fooled by the sweaters and flannel but he could threateningly lurk with the best of them when the situation called for it. In the end Hank had convinced her that a possible prison sentence was better than a pissed off _blutbad_ in a small room.

There wouldn't be a prison sentence, at least not one she ever served. Monroe had no doubt that within a day of being locked up she would disappear. A convenient garden hose had taken care of any poison powder on her skin but the hypno-eyes weren't something they could take eliminate without a lot of questions Hank wouldn't be able to answer. Monroe had settled for quietly threatening her if she hurt anyone escaping or, you know, ever showed her face in Portland again. There had been a lot of teeth and claws involved in that threat.

One of Nick's doctors was wesen (okay, initially he'd had some doubts about a Grimm receiving treatment from a _kleinerläufer_ but a few moments in an empty hall with his game face on had made sure the little rodent wouldn't try anything) or they would have still been arguing over how to slip the modified _eishexe_ blood into his IV without someone noticing. Within fifteen minutes of the cure being administered Nick's temperature had begun to climb. Half an hour later he'd started fighting the ventilator.

"I expect a really nice bottle of wine for that. And you should probably send Hank a card or something."

"Yeah, he was in here telling me all about it earlier," Nick said, eyes falling closed, lips curling into a smile.

"He has a worrisome attachment to his Taser." Monroe put a hand on Nick's forehead. Still cool but not corpse cold any more. "I think he's named it."

One gray eye slid open. "You're not going to lick me, are you?"

"Ew, why would I do that?" Monroe asked. He'd taste like hospital. Yuck. "You're obsessed with the licking."

The other eye opened. "Stress situation."

"Not even remotely the same. You were injured. _Bleeding_. I'd just beaten up another _blutbad_ for you." He'd invited Nick into his territory, fed him, watched over him while they walked the neighborhood. "It's not _weird_ behavior for a wesen," he added and then winced because saying it out loud just made it sound like it _was_ weird.

"So you do that all the time with other _blutbad_?" Nick looked skeptical.

"Not just random _blutbad_, no." His coffee was getting cold so he took a long drink. "We're actually very affectionate with family. Lots of sniffing and touching and—" And he was making himself homesick remembering evenings in front of the fire in the big farmhouse, kids and pups piled on the rugs, going to sleep surrounded by familiar heartbeats and familiar scents.

Humans invested so much meaning in every brush of skin and hug and handshake. They weighed and measured and made rules about when and where and how much. Nick was less concerned about getting into Monroe's personal space, about using a hand on his arm to get his attention or talk him into doing something against his better judgment, but still nowhere as openly affectionate as any of Monroe's siblings had been. _That_ had been one of the hardest things to give up when he'd made the choice to separate from his old life.

"Most _blutbad_ are very affectionate," he finished lamely.

"Just family?" Nick asked. Of course he would latch right onto that part of it.

"Mostly," Monroe muttered reluctantly. Soooo didn't want to go into this.

Nick grinned as if he'd figured out something important and Monroe braced himself for some sort of mocking. But Nick just said, "Okay. Is that coffee?" The last added with a hopeful look at the thermos.

"None for you," Monroe said sternly.

"You should be nice to the poor Grimm in the hospital," Nick said but he was still smiling that secret little smile.

"The poor Grimm should learn to shoot first and question the intruder in his house later," Monroe grumbled. "The coffee goes to the _blutbad_ who saved your ass. And it is excellent coffee if I do say so myself. Which, I guess, I just did say so myself."

Nick smiled, slow and sleepy. "Thanks for saving my ass, buddy."

Oh sure when he said it like _that_. "Just make sure that the next time you get jumped you don't do it on garbage day," Monroe groused. "My sinuses will never forgive me."

Nick huffed an exhausted laugh but there was still something uneasy in his eyes. "I'll do my best."

"Yeah, well, see that you do." He thought it would have sounded gruffer if he hadn't pressed a hand to Nick's hair, wanting to ease that unsettled look. Being attacked in your own territory where you were supposed to be _safe_ took time to get over.

Ending up in the hospital because he wanted to arrest the person instead of blow their head off was going to happen again because Nick had no idea what he was up against and, as this case clearly showed, Monroe couldn't warn him about everything out there.

"Sir, yes, sir." Nick closed his eyes but he didn't move away from the hand on his head.

"You're getting out of here tomorrow afternoon," Monroe told him but Nick's breathing had deepened and evened out into sleep. "Guess I'll tell you later."

He waited to leave until Juliette and Hank arrived the next morning. Juliette didn't look surprised, just thanked him quietly and hugged him again. It was disturbing how comforting that was. Hank stopped him in the hall. "This is getting to be a habit."

Tiredly clutching his thermos in one hand, Monroe looked at him. "What's that?"

"You watching over Nick in the hospital."

"Someone has to do it."

Hank hitched a hip against the wall. "Why you?"

It was curious not hostile but it got Monroe's hackles up nonetheless. He glanced around but they're alone in the hall. "Because none of you can see what would be after him."

Nick hadn't protested Monroe sitting at his bedside this time. He dared hope that meant the Grimm was coming to realize how dangerous his life had become. "There are people who will take advantage of a vulnerable Grimm." Like that hexenbeist who'd been slithering around early this morning. He hadn't seen it but he'd smelled it and he was trusting that it wouldn't do anything with the staff bustling about and Juliette in the room.

"To kill him," Hank said slowly, expression forbidding.

"There are far worse things they can do." He was too tired to sugar coat it. "Grimm's are rare. Most of us have never seen one. Never even _heard_ of one except by vague rumor and childhood stories." He wanted to leave it there but the temptation of someone besides him understanding the full weight of the problem was too much. "There's a market for everything and a Grimm would be…expensive."

"Jesus," Hank swore.

"I'm not saying every wesen he comes across is just waiting to pounce. Most of us are just people trying to get through life. Most of us would run away in terror if we came face to face with a Grimm." Like that _dunkles eichhörnchen_ Nick had bumped into on the street the other day. Guy had almost pissed himself.

"But not you," Hank stated.

Monroe rubbed his eyes. "Well to be honest I didn't realize he was a Grimm at first and then he just seemed so…." What was the word?

Hank chuckled. "Yeah, I get that. You need a ride home. You look beat."

"I'm okay." He'd caught a nap or two here and there last night. "Look, there was a hexenbeist skulking around earlier. It might have nothing to do with Nick, but I don't like the coincidence."

"I can stick around," Hank promised. "Captain gave me the day off."

"Good. I don't think she would try anything in the light of day with so many witnesses around but—"

"But we're not going to take that chance." Hank nodded decisively. "I'll keep an eye out for strangers in the staff. Is there anything else I should look for?"

"This one was definitely female. Expensive perfume. I didn't see her." There wasn't much more he could offer so he waved a goodbye and trudged down the stairs.

He went home, pulled his curtains tight across sunny windows, and woke up at three in the afternoon. He felt sluggish and muzzy wandering around a too-bright house, bumping into furniture. Figured the one day he really could have used Oregon's winter gray he got a bright blue, cloudless sky.

The first cup of coffee was quickly followed by a second. Feeling marginally more awake he checked his phone and found a message from Juliette that said they'd gotten Nick home safe and sound about half an hour ago.

He did his exercises, went an extra twenty minutes to make up for missing this morning. Felt more grounded after that, more settled. He took a hot shower, made an omelet for dinner, did a little work, watched his regular programs, and made an early night of it.

Tuesday started off better, normal. He woke at his usual time, followed his usual schedule, made sure he took all his pills, and ate a high-carb lunch. After dinner he called over to Nick's to see how he was doing.

"I'm good." Still hoarse but he did sound worlds better.

Monroe listened to him moving around. "You sound out of breath," he accused suspiciously. "Why do you sound out of breath?"

"I'm fine, Monroe. I was getting a duffle bag out of the closet." Nick grunted into the phone and there was the sound of something being dropped, some scuffling. "Damn," he swore, voice sounding very far away. "Monroe, you still there? Sorry, I dropped the phone. I found out what the _eishexe_ was after."

"What?"

"I think I broke the phone."

"No, the other part. You found out what the _eishexe_ wanted?"

"Yeah. That envelope that was delivered on Sunday. It's from my Aunt."

"What? You have an aunt?"

"Did. Maybe. She wrote a letter that starts out_: If you're reading this then it means I am unable to tell you in person_."

"Well, that sounds ominous."

"Exactly. I'm headed over to Montana in the morning." He sounded tired suddenly, exhausted.

"You're not going alone." He shouldn't even be off the couch; no way was he going to drive that far alone. Weak and vulnerable.

"Hank's going with me." Nick paused then sucked in a breath, working himself up to something Monroe was sure. "Look I hate to ask this but Juliette can't go with us. Would you be able to stay over? If someone or something else comes looking for that envelope I don't want her to be alone."

"Finally," Monroe said, pleased. "You're starting to think like a Grimm."

"I'm thinking like a worried fiancé," Nick argued, just to be stubborn Monroe was convinced.

"I'm coming over. I'll be there in twenty minutes."

"You don't have to come over tonight," Nick said, but there was undisguised relief in his voice.

"Twenty minutes. But I want you to know you're cutting into my Christmas decorating schedule."

Nick breathed out a sigh into the phone. "Thanks, Monroe."

He threw a few essentials into a bag; clothes, toiletries, medications, a couple books, and a project to keep him busy. Juliette answered the door. She looked as tired as Nick had sounded over the phone. "Hi. Come in. Have you eaten?"

"Oh, yeah, I had dinner before I came over." He left the bag on a table in the hall and followed her to the kitchen, watched her finish putting leftovers away.

"Nick should be right down." She tucked a couple containers into the fridge. "Would you like a cup of hot chocolate?"

"Why yes, thank you. That would be delightful."

He _liked_ Juliette. Liked her voice and smell, her thoughtless kindness and wicked sense of humor.

Humans weren't his normal choice of…associates. Most of the people he saw on a regular basis were wesen from group and his volunteer work. They were friendly, sociable, but they knew what he was. There was always a sense of wariness when he came into the room and Monroe knew they were just waiting for the day the monster got out. Couldn't blame them, a thousand years of evolution wasn't lightly dismissed, but it still _bothered_ him.

He _liked_ that Juliette and Nick didn't act like that. Didn't ease around his personal space like cats that knew the boundary of the dog's chain. Didn't avoid _touching_ him. They weren't entirely comfortable yet, but it was the awkwardness of getting to know someone, not the awkwardness of wondering when he was going to snap and eat them.

It was pure idiocy of course. They trusted him because they didn't yet have the slightest _clue_ what a _blutbad_ was capable of. Juliette hadn't seen his other face and Nick, well, Nick had apparently been hit in the head too many times as a child. He was under the delusion that if he told a person they were reliable and trustworthy and _good_ they would _be_ all those things.

"Here you go." Juliette handed him the mug. "Careful it's really hot. I was just getting ready to watch some TV if you want to join me. Nick should be—"

"Nick should be what?" Nick asked, coming down the stairs.

"—right down to talk to Monroe," Juliette finished. She grabbed his hand, pulling him towards the couch. "Sit with me. You look tired."

He looked hollow-eyed and dead on his feet and when Juliette sat down on the couch and tugged, he collapsed next to her with a pitiful little groan. "I am tired," he admitted. "If I sit down I'm going to fall asleep."

"Good," Juliette declared. She curled up next to him, throwing one leg across his to keep him in place. "You need to rest."

"I slept all day," Nick complained to Monroe. He stole Juliette's hot chocolate, wrapping both hands around the cup. "Every time I stop moving for more than five minutes I fall asleep."

"Dude, you were _poisoned_. Your body needs time to recover."

Nick made a face.

Juliette nudged Nick with an elbow. "Are you going to drink that hot chocolate or just cuddle with it?"

"It's warm," Nick said, making a protesting noise when she took the mug away briefly to take a sip.

He was wearing, Monroe noted, at least three layers and heavy socks.

"Awwww, my poor baby." She snuggled closer. "I'll keep you warm."

"Not in front of the guests." Kicking his feet up on the table, Nick nudged the FedEx envelope laying there towards Monroe. "You should read that."

"Are you sure? This is kind of personal."

"I'm sure."

Monroe emptied the envelope in his lap. There was a photograph, an Idaho potato key chain with five keys and a small, beautifully carved cross on it, and a letter. The paper was expensive linen but appeared to be fairly old, ivory-colored, and had a spray of flowers embossed on the left side.

_My dearest Nickolas,_

_If you're reading this then it means I am unable to tell you in person and for that I am truly sorry. You were very young when I left, I don't know if you remember me. My name is Marie and I am your mother's sister._

_There are so many things I need to tell you that are too dangerous to be committed to this letter. I know you must have been seeing some strange things and it is important that you know they are real and that they will know you can see them as the creatures they truly are._

_You must be very careful. Those hunting me and will now be hunting you._

_I have left something for you at the return address on this envelope. Be wary; others will be searching for it as well._

_With deepest love,_

_Marie Anne Kessler_

"Holy shit!" Monroe was aware his jaw was hanging open but he just couldn't seem to shut it. "Your aunt was Marie Kessler."

"You've heard of her?" Nick asked, making an attempt at straightening out of his boneless slump. "I think I met her a couple times but I was really little."

"Have I heard of her!" He stared at the letter. The writing was graceful and looping, not at all what he expected. "Remember those bedtime stories my granny used to tell me? Let's just say Blood Mary was one of the stars." A big, gory, terrifying star. "I can't believe I know the nephew of Marie Kessler." _Oh my God!_ "You can never tell anyone and when I say anyone I mean _anyone_."

"That sounds worrying," Juliette said.

"There are a lot of wesen out there who hate Grimms just for existing, but one as well-known as Marie Kessler? Woo boy, _that's_ going to have blood feuds crawling out of the woodwork."

Juliette looked at Nick. "I thought your Aunt died before you moved from New York."

"So did I," Nick said faintly.

Monroe re-read the letter then folded it away and carefully picked up the photo. It was obviously old. Edges rounded the way they did in the late Seventies and early Eighties, Technicolor sepia all over. "Is that you?"

"Wasn't he just adorable," Juliette laughed.

Nick rolled his eyes. "That's my dad right behind me. Mom's on the right and I guess that's Marie on the left."

"Wow, seriously, your family is far too good looking."

"I know, right?" Juliette said. "You should see his grandparents."

In the photo, Nick looked four, maybe five years old, grinning big and broad in a way Monroe had never seen on the grown man. All four of them were dressed in their Sunday best, Nick and his dad in matching suits, which was utterly adorable, hair thoroughly combed. There was a stone church in the background, lots of people in nice clothes at tables laid out on the lawn, kids playing on the wide stretch of grass. A wedding maybe. There were flowers and swags of yellow and white cloth.

Turning it over, he read the back. _Marie, Kelly, Reed, and Nicky. Summer 1985, Rhinebeck. _Nicky, huh. He tucked that away for future use. "Where's Rhinebeck?"

"New York state," Nick said. "We lived there before moving to Portland. I think that was at the Methodist church but I don't remember exactly. They told me she was killed in a car accident when I was eleven or twelve. It was right before we moved out here."

"Rhinebeck. Isn't that where Chelsea Clinton was married?" Monroe grinned at Nick's expression.

"Really?" Juliette said. She hit Nick on the arm. "You didn't tell me you lived somewhere famous."

"Ow. We moved when I was twelve. I don't pay attention to celebrity weddings in the town I live in _now_."

"It's true," Juliette agreed. "I had to force him to watch Kate and William's wedding."

"All eight thousand hours of it," Nick groaned. He dropped his head back against the cushions dramatically. "I was traumatized."

"Hush you," Juliette said. "He got really into it once the ceremony actually got underway."

Nick sagged into the couch again. "She had me taking notes."

"I did not you big liar. I did love that dress though."

"It was exquisite," Monroe agreed.

Nick groaned again. "Don't get her started on dresses," he begged, covering his face with his hands. Monroe could see him laughing through his fingers.

"Oh stop," Juliette said. "I have two brothers," she explained. "One is a confirmed bachelor and the other one eloped. My mom has rested her last hope of a big, white wedding on her only daughter."

Monroe leaned forward to pat Nick on the shin. "You have my condolences, man."

"Hey!" Juliette objected.

Monroe put the photo away and examined the keys. Two looked like they belonged to an automobile. The third probably went to a padlock or something similar. The fourth and fifth were identical, but too small for a house key and too large to be another padlock. Tucking the keys back into the envelope he closed it up and put it back on the coffee table.

"It's about twelve hours to White Sulphur Springs, depending on weather and how many times we stop," Nick said. "We may be able to get whatever it is my aunt left me and head back day after tomorrow. Shouldn't inconvenience you too much."

It seemed a hurried schedule to Monroe but it wasn't _his_ family issues they were dealing with. If it _were_ his family issues he would want it over as quickly as possible too.

"So you're saying that hanging out with me is an inconvenience," Juliette teased.

Nick grinned at her and tickled the foot she had laying over his lap. "If the shoe fits."

"You see what I put up with?" Juliette complained to Monroe.

Monroe just smiled at them because, yeah, he saw how she pressed her shoulder against Nick's and how Nick's hand stayed on her leg, fingers curled around the cuff of her sweatpants to keep her close. "I don't know how you stand it."

() () ()

Three days later Monroe and Juliette were eating pizza on the couch, sorting through Christmas decorations, and watching reruns of _My Fair Wedding_.

"I can't believe you haven't even put up a tree yet," Monroe said. "It's two weeks to Christmas. I've had my decorations up for a—" He stopped hearing an unfamiliar vehicle pull up behind the house.

Juliette looked up from the box in her lap. "What's wrong?"

"Someone's here." A moment later he heard the more familiar sound of Nick's SUV parking in its usual place in the front.

"They're back?"

Monroe got up to look out the window. "They're back." Nick was walking towards the house, exhaustion in every line of his body. He heard the front door open and a moment later Juliette was down the walk, throwing herself at Nick, who staggered back a couple steps but caught her and wrapped her up in his arms like they'd been apart for years.

Nick had called a couple hours ago to let them know they were finally close. Monroe hadn't talked to him but he'd been able to hear both ends of the conversation. Even over the fuzzy connection Nick had sounded tired and relieved to be nearly home.

Hank came in the back door, carrying his duffle over his shoulder.

"You look like hell," Monroe said.

Hank gave him a weary look and shook his head. "It was one hell of a trip, man. One hell of a trip." He smelled of cold night air and fatigue and several strange new things. "It started snowing as soon as we hit the Idaho border."

"That sounds bad. Did you find Nick's aunt." For Nick's sake he hoped she was alive but deep, deep down inside he knew he was praying for the opposite for a lot of reasons. He liked the Grimm who came to him for help and invited him over for dinner. That would all change if Bloody Mary Kessler got ahold of him

"Not unexpectedly," Hank said, "she died a couple months ago. We did, however, bring back her ashes. Nick wanted to bury her with his parents."

"Oh." He absolutely refused to let out the sigh of relief that bubbled up in his chest. "Was she…?" Ripped apart? Beheaded? Eaten? "How did she die?"

"Cancer," Hank said shortly.

"Oh." Monroe blinked dumbly at him. "That wasn't what I was expecting? Huh. You want a cup of coffee?"

Hank eyed him. "If I say yes will you stop sniffing at me?"

"You smell strange," Monroe complained as he headed towards the kitchen. Like books and ink and old death.

"Strange?"

"Strange!" Monroe yelled from the kitchen. He heard the front door open, heard Nick and Juliette enter the house. "Coffee!" He really didn't need to ask because they'd started the pot for him and Juliette so he knew she would want a cup and when it came to coffee Nick always said—

"Yes, please!" Nick yelled back and Monroe could hear him dropping onto the couch.

"No!" Hank shouted. "I'm headed home to get some sleep."

Monroe fixed three cups while listening to Hank departing with a promise to come by tomorrow afternoon to look at the trailer. Monroe nudged Nick with his knee to get him to sit up on the couch and take his mug. "What trailer?"

Five minutes later, they were standing in Marie Kessler's shiny, silver Airstream death-trailer.

"Wow," Monroe said, turning in a circle to take it all in. "Wow! _This_ is awesome." There was just so much to see, so many things tucked into corners, so many _drawers_.

"What is all this?" Juliette asked, mouth open a little as she stared.

Nick sat down on the bed, shaking his head slowly. "I have no idea."

"This is _awesome_!" Monroe repeated. "This is like the Smithsonian for Grimms."

Nick smiled his 'you are so amusing tome' smile but Monroe had more important things to look at. He sat down in the wooden desk chair. It creaked a little when he rolled it forward. He rubbed his hands over wood worn smooth as silk by Grimm hands.

"Would you like us to leave you two alone?" Nick asked.

Monroe ignored the sarcasm; he was just _too_ excited by this. "This is so insanely cool." How could they not realize how _insanely_ cool this was? "A _blutbad_ sitting where Grimms have sat. Where Marie Kessler sat! On this very cushion." He bounced on the cushion a couple times. "This is history making."

He opened the book laid out on the desk. It was a big, heavy thing that made him think words like folio and tome. He wasn't going to dwell on what sort of animal the leather cover came from. It sure didn't feel like cow. There was a table of contents filled with lots of German names, a few in Spanish and French, even a few in Russian. It was an encyclopedia on wesen, a PDR for Grimms.

"This is unbelievable," Juliette said, sitting next to Nick and taking his hand. "She must have been collecting this stuff for years. Decades."

"Try centuries," Monroe snorted. "Every Grimm in your crooked little family tree has added to this. _This_ is you're inheritance, man."

Nick was openly laughing at him now, which was far better than the numb, overwhelmed look from before. He leaned backwards to retrieve a smaller, leather-bound book from among the many shelves tucked into corners and niches tossing it to Monroe. "I found yours."

He turned a few pages. "Well this is wrong. I need a pen. This is so, so wrong. Oh, well, this is mostly right. Oh my—I can't believe they put that in a book." He closed it quickly sure he was blushing. "Your ancestors were a bunch of perves." Nick had the gall to grin. He'd probably read the whole damn thing already.

"What?" Juliette asked. "Wait I want to see."

"No, no, you can never look at that. Ever."

She smirked at him. "Not _that_. Keep your pervy wesen centerfolds to yourself. I want to see the picture. I've never seen what you look like when you're…different."

"Oh." He wrapped both hands around the book, staring at the word _blutbad_ stamped in florid gold letters on the worn spine. It was one thing to show it his other face to Nick who _needed_ to see and frankly would see whether Monroe liked it or not and Nick's open, unblinking acceptance had helped. Someday he would have to show her but…. He didn't want Juliette to think of him as a monster. "It's really not a good likeness and it's, um, not very pretty."

Juliette looked about a second away from coming over and hugging him or something equally awkward. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

"No, no, it's fine. I mean it's not like I'm a _bauerschwein_ or anything." He was aware he was babbling like a nervous idiot but he couldn't stop. "Now those guys are ugly."

She got up from the bed, but thankfully restrained herself to patting the hand he had white knuckled on the book before moving over to poke through a couple drawers.

Monroe looked at Nick. "You can't leave the trailer here. Not even for the night."

"Yeah." Nick slumped back against the pile of pillows. "I know a place I can take it for now."

"We should do it then," Juliette said, "so _you_ can get some sleep."

"Sleeeeep," Nick said in his best 'zombie wants brains' voice, rolling onto his back on the bed dragging an embroidered throw pillow over his face. "Neeeed sleeeep."

"You're, like, the wimpiest Grimm ever," Monroe pronounced and remorseless ripped the pillow away. "One little poisoning and you're down all week."

Nick flipped him off making Juliette laugh.

TBC


	4. Chapter 4

_**Notes**__: _This chapter starts about **three** **weeks** after the last. They've survived Christmas and New Years and are into January. Since I'm going AU I figured I'd go whole hog (or is that…whole bauerschwein) fiddle with _Last Grimm Standing_ as well. No real spoilers for that episode though.

_**Warnings**__: _Language, imprisonment, off-screen violence, kidnapping, and drugging and mentions of almost, sort-of cannibalism. Nothing worse than the show implied.

() () ()

_This_, Monroe thought sourly, shoving to his feet once more with a groan, _is what happens when you try to be a nice guy_. He was bruised, cold, hungry, thirsty, and his whole body _hurt. _The damn _cage_ wasn't tall enough to stand up in, there wasn't anywhere to sit or lay down except on the bars that kept the prisoners from digging through the hard-pack dirt floor beneath, he'd missed his afternoon appointment, and he was really fucking _pissed off_.

His captors, he figured, knew just how upset he was because they hadn't been back since they'd locked him up hours ago. Obviously they didn't want to tangle with a no longer drugged, fully conscious, angry _blutbad_—yep that was it. The other option involved a locked cage and a slow death by starvation, so uh…yeah option one it was.

They had left a plastic bottle of water and a bowl of raw meat on the floor right next to the cage.

Raw. Meat.

He'd kept the water because it wasn't drugged so far as he could tell. The bowl he'd thrown as far away as he could.

His prison—_Cage! What the hell!_—reminded him of the circus cages used for animals. Five sides of metal bars and a lock on the door that hadn't done more than groan disappointingly when he'd put his strength to it. Not even when he braced his back against the bricks that made up the back wall of the cage and used his feet.

"Obviously this is punishment," he muttered to himself.

Holding the cage to the brick wall were metal bolts with heads the size of a quarter. Those weren't moving without some serious tools, but the wall itself was old enough to be declared a historic monument. Half woged he scraped at the soft, crumbling mortar. It was hell on his claws but he'd checked his pockets for his Leatherman and keys and come up without so much as a bit of lint.

"Punishment. I didn't eat the Grimm and now my ancestors have cursed me."

He wasn't even sure who had kidnapped him or why and no one had been by to enlighten him. The tranquilizer darts had convinced him that they had specifically targeted _a_ wesen but not necessarily _him_. There were seven other cages visible in the dim light of the bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling beams.

"I mean, there's no reason to eat him." Wherever he was, he couldn't hear traffic or any noise except an occasional creak of the building above. The utter silence was getting on his nerves. "He's a good guy."

He'd never asked Nick why he became a cop but he knew the answer would be something along the lines of 'because I wanted to help people'.

"I don't think it's fair, karmically speaking, that I'm being punished just because he doesn't smell like food anymore." Nick smelled like Hank and Juliette and he smelled like Monroe himself. All the smells he'd come to associate with…family. Which was just…. Annoying. He'd been doing just fine alone in his quiet, empty, quiet house.

A loud bang came from upstairs. Hastily he pushed at the piles of mortar with his foot, scattering them.

There was a flurry of boots on the boards overhead and people shouting POLICE! And then a voice he recognized. "Monroe!"

"Hank?" In his surprise he straightened up, bashing his head on the top of the cage. "Ow, ow, damn, ow!"

The next voice was Nick's. "Monroe!"

"Yeah, down here!" He rubbed the top of his head gingerly. Man that stung! "Down here!"

A cop in black S.W.A.T. gear poked his gun down the stairs followed quickly by the rest of him. Nick was right behind, gun in one hand, flashlight in the other. Hank was right behind _him_ then five more big guys in black.

Nick came up to the front of the cage and ran the flashlight over him. "You okay?"

"Oh, I'm just peachy," Monroe grumbled.

"Yeah, you're okay." Nick smiled and Monroe was touched by the amount of relief in it.

Hank rattled the thick padlock and chain. "That's one hell of a lock. We're gonna need bolt cutters down here," he said into his radio. A voice on the other end confirmed.

"Is there anyone else here?" Nick asked. The S.W.A.T. guys were fanning out, checking the shadowy corners and neither Hank nor Nick had put away their guns.

"I haven't heard anyone." Or smelled anyone either. "Not since I woke up here." Alone. In. A. Cage.

Nick gripped his forearm through the bars. "Hang in there. We'll have you out in a second."

Knees suddenly gone shaky, he sat down, careful not to lose Nick's hand. He was going to have bruises on his butt from the bars. "How did you find me? How did you even know I was missing?"

Nick crouched down next to him, holstering his gun and readjusting his Kevlar. "Remember Bud the _eisbiber_?"

Ah, crap. "_Eisbiber_…_eisbiber_…."

"Yeah, you apparently went to his house and threatened him on my behalf," Nick said with a mile wide smirk.

Okay, so he'd paid a little visit to Juliette's stalkers right after what had become known as The _Eishexe_ Incident (Nick had successfully lobbied that it sounded cooler than _that time Nick got his ass kicked by a little girl_). That had been over three weeks ago, he'd figured he was in the clear when Nick didn't bring it up.

"Ohhhhh, that _eisbiber_." Apparently he was going to have to visit the little rodent again, this time to talk about babbling to the Grimm after he had specifically said, '_Don't_ go babbling to the Grimm.' "I don't think I actually threatened him."

Nick's mouth twitched and his eyes were amused. "Semantics. Anyway, a guy from his lodge saw them grab you and called Bud who called me."

"Oh my God," Monroe groaned and thumped his forehead into the bars. "You're saying I was saved by an _eisbiber_? A _blutbad_ saved by an _eisbiber_." He thumped the bars again. "I'll never be able to show my face in Portland again."

"What's an _eisbiber_?" Hank asked. He leaned against the top of the cage, looking down through the bars.

"Beaver kin," Monroe moaned. He made to thump his head again but Nick interposed his hand.

"Stop that," he said sternly. "Bud thinks you're working for me. That's why he called. He thought you were on a case for me."

"So he thinks you're the sidekick," Hank piped up helpfully and not a little gleefully.

Monroe thumped Nick's hand against the bars with his forehead.

"Ow! Seriously. Stop it."

"Hey, sidekicks are cool," Hank said, grinning like a mad man. "They always have the best lines and they get to tell the main guy when they're being an idiot."

"That's true," Monroe agreed. They both looked at Nick. "They do that a _lot_."

"Hey!"

The man with the bolt cutters came thumping down the stairs and in a minute Monroe was standing upright. He stretched and Hank grabbed his arm when he swayed. "You okay."

"Yeah, wow, head rush."

"Let's get you upstairs to the medics."

"Detectives," one of the S.W.A.T. guys called. "We've cleared the building. No sign of anyone else. The forensics guys want to know if they can come in now."

"Oh, you're going to want to have that tested," Monroe pointed at the scattered bowl of meat chunks. "Might, uh, clear up some of your missing person cases."

Nick and Hank and the S.W.A.T guy all turned to look at the meat. Hank said, "I don't think I even want to know what that means."

Monroe stretched again, carefully. He had a kink in his back that was going to take days to work out. "Let's just say the animal it came from never mooed. I'd really like to get out of here now."

Turned out he was in the bottom story of a three floor, wooden warehouse not too far from the river. It looked like something that had been the same year Prohibition was repealed and made him mutter about building codes and fire hazards. At least they could have kept him prisoner in a nice building.

It was night outside, which only surprised him a little. They'd taken his watch along with his wallet, cell phone, and the change from the twenty he'd used to pay for lunch but he'd always had a good sense of time. It ran in the family.

The medics made him sit in the ambulance while they checked him over, which was at least out of the drizzle of cold, cold rain. They gave him a blanket and a fresh bottle of water.

Hank and Nick talked to one of the S.W.A.T guys for a few minutes then Nick climbed into the ambulance too, sitting quietly next to him while the paramedics did their thing.

He'd broken a claw which turned into a ripped off fingernail when he changed back and hurt more than his head. He was going to be bumping it on everything for the next week. The other fingers were scratched and gouged from the bricks, there was a lot of blood smeared around, but it was nothing that wouldn't heal in a day or two.

Nick was watching him, watching over him, as the paramedics gave him an icepack for the bump on his forehead and poked and prodded at his scalp asking if this hurt and was he experiencing any dizziness. The protective gaze made his wire-tight muscles just…relax.

"You're going to need a couple stitches on this cut on your head," the medic interrupted. "Do you want them now or at the hospital?"

"Now's good. Go ahead." He had absolutely no intention of going to the hospital. "Dissolving if you have them."

There was some consultation and Monroe had to sign a form and relate his medical history and allergies. Then a big needle was pulled out and the medic very helpfully explained, "I'm going to give you a local before we start."

"Why did they grab me?" Monroe asked Nick. The other medic was pulling out a suture kit and he did not want to think about _that_.

"They work in some kind of underground fight club. Their boss is a parole officer and he's been using his, uh, _special_ parolees as fighters."

There's a lot that Nick can't say in front of the ambulance personnel. And a lot of Monroe can't tell him, about the animal tranquilizer and the hot blonde in the red jogging ensemble he'd been distracted by. Maybe he wouldn't mention that last part at all.

Hank came back in time to hear the last part of Nick's explanation, standing at the back of the ambulance, hair and jacket sparkling with rain. "Apparently the prison parole board has been rejecting a lot of applications lately. No parolees, no one in the ring, no money."

"Their boss was pissed about not having enough fighters for the weekend crowd," Nick continued, "so these geniuses took it upon themselves to rectify the situation."

"Wait, wait, wait." He took the icepack off his forehead so he could achieve an appropriately outraged look. "They grabbed me because I was _there_."

"Sir," the medic scolded, "you need to hold still."

"Pretty much," Nick agreed, smile going brittle around the edges.

"Not some Gr—cop related thing or burning personal need for revenge on their part?"

"Nope."

Well, hell. He hadn't been kidnapped because he was friends with a Grimm or because of his past or any of the thousand other reasons he'd been running through his mind over and over while he was scraping his fingers bloody on the wall. He'd been kidnapped because he'd been convenient. And then he'd been saved by beavers.

"Can I go home now?" he asked plaintively.

Nick patted his shoulder. "What's the verdict, guys?" he asked the paramedics.

They wanted to take him in for observation but Monroe refused and refused and refused and signed a waiver and eventually he was sitting in Nick's passenger seat watching the passing headlights shatter and reform as the windshield wipers swept arcs across the window.

"You okay?" Nick asked, looking sideways at him as they stopped at a red light.

No, no, very much no. He desperately wanted a shower and a change of clothes. The stench of that basement, the blood and fear and death, lingered in his nostrils. "It was raw meat," he blurted out. "Not just _meat_—it was…and I would have eaten it."

"Of course you would have," Nick said.

"Wow, no hesitation there at all." He stared out the window at the rain and the lights and the shiny, wet streets. A little support would have been nice.

"Monroe." Nick put the car in Park, half turning in his seat to look him in the face. "People survive. It's instinct. I'm not saying you jumped on it the second they put it in front of you—you _didn't_—you're stronger than that—but eventually you would have done it for as long as you needed to do it."

"To survive," Monroe repeated dully.

"Yes."

"I stopped—I _stopped_…."

"I know."

Monroe shook his head. Nick was so far from _knowing_ he'd need GPS and a helicopter to get there. "I stopped—"

Someone honked behind them. Nick glanced through the back window and leaned over to switch on the blue and red lights, motioning for the car to pull around.

"I need a shower," Monroe said because he couldn't say any of the words bubbling up in his chest, thick and burning.

Nick looked at him, looked him directly in the face, and Monroe envied him for being able to do that with such ease. "Whatever you did in the past it's past."

Monroe growled in frustration because he was just so damned…convincing. "Just because _you_ believe a person is good doesn't mean they are."

"Yes it does," Nick said confidently. He faced forward again and shifted back into Drive, pulling through the light just as it turned yellow. "You threw the bowl away, Monroe."

Without hesitation.

"You'd do it again," Nick added. "Because you _are_ a good person whether you can admit it to yourself or not. If I didn't believe that people could make up for past sins I would never have become a cop."

"You work a lot of homicides," Monroe pointed out.

Nick shrugged one shoulder. "Sometimes they need a little convincing to begin their penance. _You_ did it on your own."

Letting out a shuddery sigh he asked, "Is this where we cry and hug and I admit that I secretly wanted a kitten as a child but my parents only got me a fish."

Nick grinned. "Well you can cry if you want, I can't hug you while I'm driving, and I already know you had a pet bird so I'm kind of doubtful about the last part."

"Birds aren't much for cuddling," Monroe shot back grumpily, refusing to be cheered up.

"You really did want a kitten?" Nick's grin turned absolutely delighted. "If I'd known that I would have gotten you one for Christmas."

"The Cheese of the Month club was quite generous, thank you." It was actually one of the best gifts he'd ever gotten. A new fancy-cheese every month, how could you top that?

"It's the gift that keeps on giving," Nick deadpanned, turning onto Monroe's street.

Monroe rolled his eyes and cracked a smile. "And no litter boxes."

His house was dark. Expecting to be back well before sunset, he hadn't left so much as a porch light on.

Nick got out of the truck, following him to the porch where Monroe stopped at the door patting his pockets. "They took my keys," he remembered. "And my wallet and watch. My great grandfather's watch."

"They're in evidence," Nick said softly, putting a hand on his arm. "They're fine. One of them tried to pawn the watch and he still had your wallet and keys in his pocket. You're probably missing whatever cash was in it but he didn't have time to use your cards or checks. We found your phone in your car. Tomorrow we'll go get them back." He sounded so sure of that. "Do you have a spare?"

It took him a second to figure out what Nick was asking. "Yes. It's in the back yard." He retrieved it and opened the back door. "Was that how you caught them? The watch?"

"The third one. We were running license plates and checking houses. The watch popped after we had two of them in custody already." Nick followed him into the kitchen. "Wouldn't hurt to change your locks. I'll ask Bud if he knows someone."

He wouldn't. Not anyone who would work for Monroe's type. "I need a shower," he said tiredly.

"Okay," Nick said.

He found bruises he hadn't even realized he had and washing his hair made his scalp sting. Halfway through rinsing out the soap he remembered he wasn't supposed to get the stitches wet. He took his time, washed everything twice, then found his softest sweats and flannel. The ones that were so old and comfortable they had holes worn in them. Doing up the last button he realized he could still smell Nick in his house.

He was in the kitchen, talking on the phone while he poked in the fridge, and looked up when Monroe stopped at the door. "Feel better?"

"Yes. No." He was restless and twitchy and needed to check his territory which was ridiculous because the attack had happened on the other side of town.

"Do you want toast?" Nick called after him then said into the phone, "No, Hank, I am not making you toast. Yeah, he's a little upset but doing okay."

Monroe went back upstairs, checked every room, rubbed his hands over his favorite furniture and clocks, the corners of the walls, the knob of the stair railing. Nick came out of the kitchen to watch with a worried frown when Monroe came back downstairs, trailing a hand over the mantle, the back of the couch, the neck of his cello, corner of his worktable.

"I'm fine," he said. "I just needed…." He didn't know how to say it so a non-_blutbad_ would understand. "…to check," he finished lamely.

Nick nodded. "Okay." His phone went off again. "Hey, hon. Yeah, we're at his house. He's alright."

It had rained quite a bit while he was being kidnapped. Kidnapped. Jesus. The grass was wet and cold against his feet, soaking the bottom two inches of his pant legs. He paced out the boundary repeatedly and was eyeing the woods across the road when Nick came to the door to tell him the food was ready.

"Finished?"

Not quite. He crowded Nick up against the kitchen counter and sought out the bruises he'd smelled earlier. Nick's heartbeat jumped and picked up a little but he didn't fight, which was exactly what Monroe needed right now.

"How?" he asked and Nick, thankfully, got what he wanted to know.

"After Bud contacted me we started our search at your car. It's safe by the way. Once forensics went over it, I had it dropped off at my house. The guy who pawned your watch was planning on coming back for it."

Monroe grunted thanks, nosing into a nasty scratch along his collarbone. It had been cleaned, the strong scent of antiseptic mixed with the rank, musty stench of _baumsteiger_ clinging to his clothes. God knew what those things had on their claws.

"We checked out the local video cameras, got their license plate numbers, and tracked them down. At that point they had dropped you off and two of them were out trolling for another victim."

Monroe turned him to face the counter, shoving up Nick's shirt, so he could check the bruises he could smell on the Grimm's back. They spread out from his spine like a pair of angry wings.

"It's not that bad," Nick said. "They got a little frisky when we took them down." His voice hitched as Monroe's hands closed gently over his ribs holding him still. "That tickles."

"Did you have someone look at it?"

"Yes," Nick said. "They gave me aspirin. Hank had worse."

That didn't help. It just made him need to find Hank and make sure he was okay and, really, when had this become his life. Monroe pulled Nick's shirt down and stepped back, satisfied the Grimm wasn't badly injured and a little embarrassed he'd gotten that worked up. "Sorry. I just needed to be sure you were alright. It's—"

"A _blutbad_ thing," Nick finished. He turned around, leaning carefully against the counter with an amused and worried expression. "I get it. Monroe, you were attacked, drugged, kidnapped, and locked in a cage. You're allowed a little freaking out." He handed over a plate and pushed Monroe towards the table in the other room. "Go. Sit. Eat. I'll bring you some juice."

He went, sat, and started eating because now that he was paying attention he was ravenous. Nick brought a tall glass of orange juice and a taller glass of water. "Drink those. The medics said you were dehydrated."

"Did they?" He didn't remember that, but a lot of the last few hours were a blur.

"Yes. How's your head." Nick moved behind him and Monroe was mildly amazed to realize it hardly bothered him to have a Grimm standing at his back, poking at his head wounds. "Geeze, you have, like, three bumps up here."

"The cage was very short," Monroe grumped.

Nick made a thoughtful noise in his throat.

Monroe could smell his amusement and couldn't resist adding, "You would have fit right in," earning a smack on the shoulder.

"Funny," Nick said dryly. "This doesn't look so bad," he said about the biggest lump. "Once your hair dries you'll hardly be able to tell they had to cut some away."

"What?" Automatically he put a hand up to feel, running into Nick's fingers. His scalp was still mostly numb.

"Just a little bit." Nick pushed his hands away. "You're lucky you have curly hair. You can hardly see it." His fingers gently explored the other bumps. "I had to get stitches in my head once. Ended up shaving all my hair off because they cut out a big chunk. It looked terrible."

"Why did you need stitches?" Monroe asked curiously. He couldn't imagine Nick without his long, floppy hair.

"Training accident at the academy."

The way he said _training accident_ made it sound like there should be quotes around it. "What happened to the other guy?"

Nick was silent; hands resting on top of Monroe's head for a moment before falling away. "He needed more than stitches."

"Huh."

"What?"

"Nothing, I just never knew you were such a hooligan in your youth."

Another smack to his shoulder. "I was not a hooligan." Nick moved around to sit in the opposite chair, picking up the juice he'd brought out for himself.

"Is that why you became a cop?" Because once he'd started to wonder he couldn't stop. "To make up for your hooligan ways?"

"No." Nick grimaced. "Well, maybe. A little." He grinned and sipped his drink and looked pointedly at the glass Monroe had hardly touched. "You know those tests you take in school that are supposed to tell you what career you should go into."

"Yes," Monroe said, a little warily because this story wasn't going in any way like he thought it would.

"Mine said I had a strong tendency towards civil service."

Monroe huffed. "Go figure." Reaching for his own glass, he bumped his injured finger against it. "Damn." He sucked on the offended nail which didn't really help because it was covered by a Bandaid.

"You really tore your hands up," Nick commented.

Monroe sighed and pulled the finger out of his mouth. "I was using my claws to loosen the mortar on the wall. I thought I could get the bolts loose and push the cage away from the wall far enough to get out."

"Clever. You didn't even need us to rescue you."

Monroe snorted. "I wasn't going pin my hopes on you showing up with the cavalry."

Nick's eyes went big and hurt. "You're my friend, Monroe, of course I'd come after you. I thought…I thought they had taken you because of me. Because you helped a Grimm."

"I didn't mean—dude, do not even give me those sad eyes—I meant that I didn't even think you knew I was missing yet. I knew you would find me once you started looking." Nick was a finder, a tracker, that's what he did. "You're good at your job."

That seemed to mollify the man. "I'll need to take you down to the station tomorrow to get a written statement. Larry the _eisbiber_ did a lineup already but we'll need to see if you can identify any of your attackers."

"Yay," he said, unenthusiastically.

Nick made a sympathetic noise. "If it helps, they were already looking to make a deal against their boss. They'll probably plead out and you won't even need to testify." He rose and gathered the plates and glasses. "You want anything else?"

"No, thanks. I think I'm going to go to bed." It wasn't too far from his normal bed time and, with the excitement of the day over, exhaustion had settled deep into his bones.

When he wandered downstairs at three in the morning, restless and thirsty, he found Nick stretched out on his couch, one of his Aunt's books open on his chest. The long-necked lamp next to the couch was on, a single oval of warm, yellow light in the darkness.

Monroe stood watching the sleeping Grimm for a few minutes before removing the book. Tipping the page towards the light he read the title. _Lowen_. Huh, that just figured. A gas station receipt marked another wesen a few pages later. _Lausenschlange_. Great. Now he was going to have nightmares.

Closing the book he put it safely out of the way and grabbed a blanket out of the basket under the coffee table. When he turned back Nick's eyes were open, weirdly black in the dim light. It only made his heart jump a little. "Go back to sleep," Monroe murmured, spreading the blanket over him. He turned out the lamp.

Nick mumbled good night and tucked his head into the crook of his arm, snuffling like a sleepy puppy.

Still mostly asleep himself, Monroe patted him on the head a couple times and meandered back up to his bed. "Good night."

TBC


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes: **Ha, some actual plot movement. I knew I had it in me.

**Warnings:** Language, opera music, allusions to possible, off-screen possible non-consensual sex.

() () ()

Four days after his extrication from future stardom in a wesen underground fight club, Monroe parked next to the shiny silver Airstream and put his key in the lock, pausing for a moment to enjoy that. It still gave him a little thrill of awe and excitement every single time. Nick trusted him with _this_. He didn't think he would ever get used to that.

One of the larger tomes was open on the desk, a florescent green post-it note marking the last page that had been scanned. It had a drawing of a tiny stick figure asleep in a chair at a tiny desk with tiny Z's rising up to curl around the words DONE TO HERE.

He turned on the laptop and scanner and, while they warmed up, began opening curtains to let in the winter-pale light. The trailer was tidy and well organized but the low roof and dim lighting made him claustrophobic. From a cabinet under the bed he pulled out a portable phonograph and the wooden crate of old 78's. At least _one_ of Nick's ancestors had possessed decent taste in music. Thumbing oh-so-carefully through the records he came across, "Oh, Caruso."

His phone rang just as he got everything set up. Dropping into the desk chair he spun it in a half circle and hit the Talk button. "Monroe."

"Do you remember the two people found crushed to death in the park?"

"Hello to you too, Nick," Monroe replied breezily because if he couldn't break Nick's bad habits at least he could sharpen his sarcasm skills on them. "Yes, I'm having a good morning, thank you for asking."

"Good morning, Monroe." Nick's tone was dry as the Mojave in August. "How is your day going? Do you have a moment to assist Hank and myself on a case?"

"See, I don't even believe that. No sincerity." He spun the chair idly with the toe of one boot, making it creak slightly.

"Yeah, I'm on for this weekend," Hank said somewhere in the background, talking to someone else. "Be prepared to lose your socks."

"You're in a frisky mood," Nick commented and Monroe could hear him smiling over the phone.

Monroe said, "I slept well. Now what's this about dead people?" He winced at his own eagerness. It had been days since Nick had bothered him with Grimm things (he wasn't counting the day after his rescue that had mostly been spent at the police station filling out paperwork and pointing to photos of bad guys).

It wasn't that he was bored so much as…. Oh who was he kidding, he was so, _so_ bored. His injured fingers were mostly healed but still tender enough he couldn't do the most delicate movements he needed for his work and there was only so much cleaning a man could do in the war against the ever encroaching mold and moss of the inland rainforest that was northwestern Oregon.

Juliette had purchased the scanner last year intending to digitize her family photo albums in her free time. "Ha!" she'd said, setting the still in the box scanner down on the desk with a thunk. "Free time. Obviously a moment of utter insanity."

It was busy work but it got him out of the house and he could read while he worked. It was amazing how much information the Grimms had collected over the centuries. Amazing and sometimes bizarre and sometimes so utterly biased and _wrong_ he couldn't help adding a few notes to tell the other side of the story. For posterity.

"You remember that case we looked at the night you came over for dinner?"

He thought Nick must be at his desk given the amount of background noise. "Yeeeeees," he said warily. Nick excelled at leading questions. He wondered if the Grimm had learned that in cop school or if Hank had taught him.

Nick's voice dropped and Monroe pictured him leaning close to the desk, turned away from the rest of the room. "Do you think a _lausenschlange_could have killed them?"

Monroe tried to recall the pictures and descriptions of injuries in the police file he'd read almost a month ago in Nick's dining room. "Oh yeah, man. Easily. You want me to check through the books?"

"You're at the trailer?"

"That I am."

"Great. Hank and I are headed out to track down and re-interview the suspects, we'll swing by."

"I'll be here," he promised and hung up. "Alright then." He gave the phonograph a few cranks to get it started. "Time for a little music."

Half an hour later the door opened and Nick climbed the steps, grimacing in the direction of the record player. "What are you listening too?"

"Is that Caruso?" Hank asked, right behind him shutting the door against the cold. "Man, I haven't heard that since music appreciation in high school. I used to love his stuff." Squeezing past Nick he picked up the record sleeve, examining the back of it.

"I don't think that's something you want to admit in public," Nick teased.

Monroe lifted the needle and applied the brake to the record. "Don't listen to his plebian words. At least someone here has some class." Hank listened to a lot of old jazz too, which was acceptable.

Nick raised his hands in surrender; one of them had a coffee cup in it. "Well this plebian brought you coffee from your favorite place but if you don't _want_ it."

Monroe snatched the cup from his fingers. "I didn't say that." He sniffed. "Is that…?"

Nick grinned at him and produced a small paper bag containing chocolate, caramel biscotti if the nose wasn't mistaken and it never was.

"I totally forgive you for you lack of musical acumen," Monroe mumbled around a mouthful of coffee. Picking up the book he'd found he handed it over and settled back into the desk chair. Nick dropped onto the bed and Hank sat next to him to read over his shoulder.

"Damn," Hank muttered. "That's ugly."

Hank still had a reduced-in-size bandage on his left hand, for injuries received while taking a knife away from one of the perps. He'd eventually gone in to get four stitches across the heel of his palm and he'd been vocal about the unfairness of Monroe's accelerated _blutbad_ healing.

"Be very, _very_ careful," Monroe told them. "Seriously, I can't emphasize the _VERY_ enough. _Lausenschlange_are incredibly dangerous."

"If this is our killer he or she crushed two people to death. Trust me when I say that we will be careful." Nick turned the page and frowned. "This is pretty much what the other book said. Grimm tracks murderous wesen, Grimm kills murderous wesen." He shifted it over for Hank to get a closer look. "Grimm uncovers evidence that murderous wesen was murderous."

"You sure you don't want me to come with you?" Monroe offered. "A little extra muscle in case the snake feels like causing trouble."

Nick smirked wickedly. "You'll give Hank a complex talking like that. We decided years ago that I'm the brains and he's the muscles in our partnership."

Hank protested that with a shove that was hard enough Nick nearly went off the side of the bed. Ignoring his partner's flailing he said to Monroe, "We're just doing follow-up interviews so The Brain here can get a look at them."

"And if one of them is confronted with a Grimm and _confesses_ so much the better," Nick added, successfully recovering his seat.

Monroe said thoughtfully, "If he's The Brain does that make you Pinky?"

Ohhhh, Hank gave him an evil look for that.

Nick ducked his head to hide a broad flash of teeth and asked, "Is this all there is?"

"_Lausenschlange _ are fairly common. Undoubtedly there are other entries but I've only found two so far and you've already read the other one."

"These guys are creepy as hell," Hank said. "And they seem to eat a lot of children."

Monroe shrugged. "Easier to swallow whole I suppose."

Hank pulled back from the book with a grimace. "I did _not_ need to know that."

Nick closed the book with a thump and a puff of dust. "Thanks, buddy," he coughed, waving a hand to clear the air.

"Thanks for the coffee," Monroe responded, saluting them with the cup. He rolled the chair over to the record player with his feet. "Now, unless you care to stay and listen to some fine Italian opera…."

"We're going," Nick said hastily, shoving the book onto the desk and following Hank out the door.

"Philistine!" Monroe yelled after him.

Nick poked his head back in the door. "Did that friend of Bud's get the locks changed out okay?"

"Oh, yeah, he did a great job." Except Monroe had nearly scared him to death when he'd opened the door to knocking at six in the morning, grumbling and growling at the early hour. The man had twitched and scurried like a frightened _mauzhertz_ every time Monroe was in the same room with him, but he'd done an excellent job on his original hardwood doors and, though he would never admit it out loud, he did feel better with a new set of keys in his pocket.

"Good. I'll see you later." The door closed firmly behind him.

"Finally." Monroe restarted the phonograph. He leaned back in his chair he took a drink of rather tasty coffee, humming along with the music. This was the best way to spend a morning.

Nick came back three hours later. "Hey," he said, shutting the door and leaning against it. "I'm glad you're here. I didn't hear the music. Thought you had gone home."

He had switched to the radio after the first record. The replacement needles he'd ordered hadn't arrived yet and he didn't want to ruin a record. "Still here. Just finishing up this book."

Nick shuffled over to sit down on the bed.

"How did your interviews go?"

"Okay," Nick sighed.

"How succinct." Monroe gave him another look, the lax fingers, the sunglasses he hadn't taken off yet. "You—wait, you smell different."

"Do I?" Nick asked, turning his head to look at Monroe, hair falling in his eyes.

"Yeeees." It was a scent he knew but hadn't smelled since— "You ran into a _ziegevolk_!" Worse he had let it _touch _him.

"Zieg-a-what-now?" Nick asked, lifting his head an inch to get a better look at Monroe. A line appeared between his eyebrows. He was probably squinting behind his the sunglasses.

"God, we should have started at the back of the alphabet," he groaned. "_Ziegevolk_. Hairy, hooved, funny little—" he put his index fingers on his hairline and wiggled them "—horns. Looked like a goat."

"Oh, yeah." Nick let his head drop again, rubbing his forehead with his fingertips. "Him. Yeah."

"Yeah what?" he prodded when nothing more seemed forthcoming. Walking over to the bed he sat down next to the Grimm, pushing until Nick made room. Carefully he removed the sunglasses.

Nick gazed up at him with too big eyes. "The _lausenschlange_—get this—the _lausenschlange_ belongs to New Beginnings."

Monroe frowned. "New Beginnings." He'd seen their commercials.

"Totally a cult. I won five bucks off Rogers because he thought it was a commune or something being out in the woods, but I said cult and…," he sighed again and closed his eyes, pressing the heel of his hand hard against his forehead, "…yeah totally a cult. He gave me a brochure. It's glossy."

"A cult run by a _ziegevolk_," Monroe filled in. "How apropos." He poked Nick him in the shoulder. "Hey, wake up. We need to get you home and I'm certainly not carrying you to the car."

"Stop that." Nick flailed at him. "I'm awake. I'm just…tired."

"Uh huh. Go get in my car. I'm driving you home." It was too late to negate the effects of the goat's touch but the sooner it was cleaned off the better. Grabbing a couple books out of the big bookcase he powered down the computer and scanner, attached the post it note to the last page he'd scanned, and closed all the curtains. When he turned around he found that Nick hadn't moved. He looked up at Monroe. "I feel weird."

"Weird. Very descriptive."

Nick thought about it for a second. "Like that time I accidentally took too much cough syrup."

"I can't believe you drove here like this." Shrugging into his coat, he shifted the books under one arm and tucked Nick under the other.

"I needed to talk to you." There was a long pause as they got down the narrow stairs. "Something's wrong with me."

"There are _so_ many things I could say to that." He leaned Nick against the side of the trailer while he locked the door then hauled him to the car and repeated the maneuver to get the door open and the books safely stashed in the back seat. "And you decided that driving over here was a better idea than picking up the phone. Idiot. Watch your head." Carefully he folded the man into the passenger seat and belted him in.

Nick watched him do it without protest.

"It doesn't usually affect people like this. It never affects people like this." Monroe retrieved the box of wet wipes he kept in the glove compartment and pulled one out, putting it to use on Nick's right hand where the _ziegevolk_ scent was strongest. "Usually it makes you like them. A lot." The astringent scent of the lemon used in the all-natural wipes made his nose sting.

"I didn't like him," Nick said solemnly and snagged his sunglasses out of Monroe's pocket, slipping them back on. "He was creepy."

"Well the last person you found _creepy_ ate little girls so I suppose that means he's more evil than the average goat. You do seem to sense these things."

"'cause I'm a Grimm?"

"'cause you're a Grimm," Monroe affirmed and shut the door.

It was still early in the day and the house was empty. He took Nick upstairs and shoved him in the shower then took his clothes downstairs to the laundry, carrying them between thumb and forefinger to minimize contact. Cleaning out the pockets he found Nick's notebook and pen, a backup pen, two butterscotch hard candies, a pair of oversized tweezers, a pocket knife, thirty-seven cents in change, three empty evidence bags, a pair of latex gloves, another pen, one very linty piece of tangerine flavored gum, and the brochure from New Beginnings.

It was indeed glossy.

After perusing the clothing tags, Monroe put the whole lot into a warm wash with a double rinse cycle and a lot of soap. In the kitchen he filled the kettle and put it on to heat and took a moment to stand by the window in the kitchen of this house he'd only been in twice and just breathe through a moment of belated panic on Nick's behalf.

If the _ziegevolk_ had realized he was a Grimm—and there was no way he hadn't if he'd woged right in front of Nick. He'd forgotten how stressful it was worrying about other people. Out of practice he supposed. It had been a long time since he'd had anyone to worry about. Now he had three.

When the kettle whistled he fixed a cup of tea—in a _bag, _heathens— and sat down to thumb through the cult brochure. The cover was a full page photo of a pretty blonde woman walking through a woodsy clearing. She had a bouquet of wild flowers in her hand and a beatific smile. How trite.

Inside was a lot of tripe about New Beginnings providing the ideal environment to _find_ yourself and a small inset of the founder one William (Billy) A. Capra. _Find yourself_, Monroe snorted, _find yourself with an empty bank account is more like it_. There was an application and contact information. Who had to apply for a cult? He was surprised there wasn't a credit check form.

Setting the brochure aside he paged through the books he had brought until it was time to move the laundry to the dryer. A few minutes later Nick came down, dressed in sweats, and sagged into a chair at the kitchen table.

"How do you feel?" Monroe put a second cup of tea in front of him.

"Like I just woke up from a three day drinking binge," Nick groaned pitifully, elbows on the table in a profound slump. His hair was still wet, darkening the shoulders of his t-shirt.

"Drink your tea."

Nick made a face.

"It will help," he insisted and pushed the plate of cookies closer. Actually he had no idea but it certainly couldn't hurt. Sugar would help the headache at least. "Eat something."

Nick picked up a cookie, nibbling the edge. "What happened? I remember Hank dropping me off at my car. I remember my head was really starting to hurt. After that it's all kind of confusing."

He spun the book and slid it across the table. "This is what happened."

Nick read, turning through the pages with one hand, alternating between cup and cookie with the other. "It says that Grimm's have some immunity to their touch. Do you think that's why I was all…?" He waived a hand, scowling at the picture in the book.

"It must be. I've never seen _anyone_ react like that to a _ziegevolk_. And it did give you time to get away from him. Or in the case of most Grimms it would give them time to, you know," he made a motion across his throat. "Off with their head."

Nick rolled his eyes. They were still hugely dilated. "So you've seen one before?"

"Went to school with one." Monroe got up to pour more hot water. "Not exactly the finest physical specimen. Even for high school. Anyone else would have been the target of every bully in the school but Elvis was friends with all the jocks—"

Nick held up a hand. "Wait, wait, wait. The guy's name was _Elvis_?"

"Dude, do I interrupt you?" Monroe huffed.

"Yes." Nick bit the inside of his cheek and continued with a mostly straight face. "Sorry. Do go on."

"Elvis is a traditional name."

"Wait, you're saying—"

"I'm not saying anything." Monroe mimed zipping his lips, locking them, and throwing away the key.

Nick's whole face brightened. "Man, I _wish_ I could tell Wu that. He would _freak_ out."

"_Anyway_ this guy dated all the hot girls, was best friends with the popular kids, got straight A's." Monroe paused to think back. High school hadn't been the best time in his life; he'd spent a lot of time not thinking about it. "Although every time I saw him he had a book in his hands so he might actually have earned those."

"Sounds like a real winner," Nick said. He rubbed absently at the hand the _ziegevolk_ had touched. The skin looked red and aggravated like he'd scrubbed it raw.

"Oh, don't get me wrong most _ziegevolk_ are pretty sleazy." Returning to the table, he sat down. "Elvis could have been a _lot_ worse. These guys are usually politicians, big shots, Hollywood types. You've seen them, always shaking hands and patting backs. Then there are the inevitable sex scandals, illegitimate children, etcetera, etcetera. Yet somehow they never go to jail."

Nick considered that a moment. "Most of the people we saw in the New Beginning's compound were women."

"So this guy is a collector." He'd never respected creatures that didn't use their wits and skills to hunt. It was one thing to take down prey that could fight back, what they did was like baiting a wild animal until it friendly and then eating it.

"Yeah." Nick scrubbed his hands over his face. "I've got to call Hank and let him know it's going to be a couple hours before I come back in. We were supposed to meet with the FBI liaison this afternoon."

"Or at all," Monroe insisted. "You should take the rest of the day off." A horrible thought occurred to him. "He didn't touch Hank did he?"

Nick shook his head. "No, I don't think so. He shook my hand. I don't remember him getting that close to Hank." He scrubbed a hand through his hair in an obvious effort to focus. "Okay so we have a wesen who is basically holding twenty plus people prisoner but none of them want to be rescued or will testify against him because he's…. What? Drugged them?"

"They emit a scent right off their skin or in their sweat or something," Monroe told him, "but it's not permanent. Keep them away from him and eventually it will wear off."

Nick made a thoughtful noise and sipped his tea. He pulled the second book over, turning to the marked page. "So it's a scent, a pheromone. What does it do?"

"Like I said before—although you might not remember what I said before," he added thoughtfully. "It makes you like them. You want to be with them, do what they say, make them happy. Like being in lust with a side order of obsessiveness."

"Great. The wesen version of the date rape drug. Jesus." Nick rubbed his face again. "The FBI has been looking into this guy for a long time. They have five missing persons who were last seen on the New Beginning's compound. Most don't have any family to put up a fuss but he slipped up with the last girl who disappeared. Her brother is a PI. He tracked her down and made a lot of noise."

"Let me guess, he was one of the dead guys in the park."

"Gold star for you," Nick said wearily. "I really don't like this guy."

Monroe had never liked _ziegevolk_ much either. Even Elvis Greenspan. "Dude, you cannot get near this guy again. Once they touch you, pfffft, that's all she wrote."

Nick frowned thoughtfully over his tea. "He already touched me and I didn't exactly fall in love with him. You don't think I'm protected from that?"

"Do you really want to take that chance, man? Trust me the goat would be thrilled to get a Grimm under his power."

Nick made a face. "Okay, I'll stay away from that part of the investigation." He got that stubborn look Monroe knew so well. "But I'm going back to the office this afternoon. I just need to take a nap. See if I can get rid of this headache."

"Did you take something for it?"

He scrubbed a hand through damp hair, slicking it back from a face that was a little paler than normal. "Yeah."

"You want me to stick around."

Nick waved him off. "No, I'm good, thanks." He finished his cookie and took his cup to the sink and trudged toward the stairs.

Once he heard Nick's footsteps in the bedroom upstairs, he let himself out and headed for his car, dialing Hank's number as he got into the driver's seat.

"Griffin."

"Hey, it's Monroe."

"What's up?"

"Did Nick call you?"

"Should he have?"

Monroe gave him a quick explanation. "We need a face to face." Nick might not remember the _ziegevolk_ getting its slimy hooves on his partner but that didn't mean it hadn't happened. "Let's meet at the trailer." He wanted to see if there was anything else on the _ziegevolk_ in the books.

"I'll be there in fifteen." It was more like ten minutes later he knocked then opened the door. "What's up? Where's Nick? I saw his jeep out there."

Monroe explained what had happened. "Did he touch you at all? Shake hands. Bump into you in passing?" He sniffed surreptitiously because Hank wasn't as patient as Nick was when it came to Monroe's fussing, and was relieved to find only traces of _ziegevolk_ scent probably passed on by Nick second hand.

"No. Just Nick." Hank scrubbed his hands over his thighs like he was thinking about what could have happened.

"You have to keep him away from this guy," Monroe said. "This Grimm-immunity or whatever it is might not last through a second exposure." He thought Hank would understand what that meant having been inside the cult compound.

Hank snorted. "I'll talk to the Captain about having him follow up on the office work side of the investigation."

Monroe nodded, pleased with Hank's sneakiness. "You think that will work?"

"Nick isn't stupid. He won't endanger himself or me without good reason." Hank shrugged. "That said, he won't like it, but Renard will keep an eye on him if I tell him there's a problem between Nick and the suspect. It's not that unusual in our line of work."

Monroe doubted Captain Renard would bat an eye even if Hank walked up to his desk and told him straight out that his Grimm had been infected by a _ziegevolk_ and needed to be confined to the office, but he didn't have proof of that. The guy smelled human the few times he had been near enough for scenting. Human and something…more.

Monroe said, "I've found a couple books with information on _ziegevolk_."

"I don't suppose they have an antidote," Hank said sourly. He took the books, balancing them on one knee.

"Huh. Like it would be that easy."

"You know," Hank said thoughtfully, "that might explain why the original investigation didn't get anywhere. Billy Capra was their last interview. Case suddenly dried up after that. Ended up in the cold files until the Captain pulled it out to keep Nick busy."

Monroe nodded. "That certainly sounds like a _ziegevolk_ in action."

"We've put in for a DNA warrant for the _lausenschlange_," Hank told him then grinned suddenly. "I can't say that word with a straight face."

"You're as bad as Nick," Monroe grumbled. "You have to say it properly. _Lausenschlange_. See how it rolls off the tongue. Stop laughing!"

"Sorry," Hank said, pressing his lips together to stop smiling.

Seriously, they were both _children_. "Back to the case," he prompted huffily.

"The _lausenschlange'_s name is Lorena Mas." Hank glanced up at him. "Did you know that Mas actually means snake in Somali? Her father was from there. Mother was an American archeologist."

"Subtle," Monroe commented.

Hank tapped a finger on the Grimm books. "These have a lot of European names. I keep wondering if we'll run into something from down there."

"Somalia?" He couldn't quite wrap his tongue around the foreign word. Not properly like Hank had, which spoke of some familiarity with the language.

"Africa," Hank corrected.

Oh now that would be interesting. He'd grown up on family stories about die Deutsche wesen and he'd heard of the Spanish and French and English bloodlines but next to nothing from the Southern Hemisphere. "I'm sure we will. Of course they'll probably be in a language none of us can read."

Hank grunted agreement. "I speak a little Somali, a little less Swahili, and even less Spanish, but I never learned to read more than maps and signs in either and I'm pretty rusty on that." He tapped the book again, thoughtfully. "My French isn't bad though."

"Well aren't you full of hidden depths." He'd had no idea Hank was such

Hank rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. "Not really. I did a tour in Somalia back in the 90's. And my _meme_ was from Louisiana." He paused and a look of dawning dismay spread across his face. "Man, I hope _her_ stories weren't true. If we start running into Hoodoo witches and zombies I'm going to retire and become a crossing guard."

"I definitely want to hear those stories," Monroe told him eagerly. He already had half formed plans to invite Hank over for dinner and a little light interrogation.

Hank shook his head but not in any way that seemed to signal reluctance to talk about his family. "Make me more coffee and I'll tell you anything you want to know."

"I have coffee," Monroe promised.

The other man smiled agreeably. "There was significant DNA found on the bodies of our murder victims," he said, shifting the topic. "We get a match and we're good to go with Ms. Mas but we figure it was Capra who ordered the killings. Turns out both victims were trying to find family members who had joined New Beginnings. The PI was looking for his sister. The other man was an investment banker from New Mexico looking for his ex-wife. Apparently he neglected to change his passwords when they divorced. About a month after she joined the cult she drained his bank accounts."

"Now there's a cautionary tale. This Lorena Mas won't give you the _ziegevolk,_" he warned. He didn't think either Nick or Hank got just how powerful this wesen was. "None of them will. Not while they're under his influence. Probably never."

Hank nodded seriously. "The FBI is willing to send us a counselor who specializes in cult deprogramming. Figured we'd let them have a crack at her."

"That might work in a couple weeks or so," Monroe agreed. "Once the pheromone has had time to work its way out of her system. Depending on how long she's been under, you may be looking at some serious detox time."

"Withdrawal?" Hank asked.

"Probably, but that won't even be your worst problem. Think of it like…." He didn't really have the skill to make up analogies on the fly, not like his seventh grade geometry teacher. Now there was a man who knew his way around a comparison. "Like brainwashing a person using drugs. After a while you don't need the drugs anymore."

"We'll keep that in mind." Hank patted the books as he stood. "I'll read these tonight."

"Be _very_ careful, man," he extorted. "Very careful." At some point in the last couple months Juliette and Nick and, by extension, Hank had become important in a way that made his stomach ache when he thought about them being hurt.

"We will," Hank promised. "I'd better get back. Work to do."

"Me too," Monroe said reluctantly. Going back to working on wristwatches for the jewelry store had become something of a letdown but a fellow had to pay the rent.

TBC


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes: **I've always felt they underplayed just how _evil_ Billy Capra was in _Lonelyhearts_. The guy kept people in cages! Also, I don't think I've ever seen a TV in Monroe's house on the show but I gave him one anyway because this is the glory that is AU and Monroe strikes me as the type who would have his Programs.

**Warnings: **Long, heartfelt talks about _feelings_ and stuff, contemplation of off-screen violence, drug use, imprisonment, and the possibility of off screen noncon/rape/impregnation.

() () ()

"Television," Monroe grumbled, "has given me a false belief that stakeouts are far more exciting than they are in real life."

Nick didn't bother to look up from whatever he was doodling in his notebook. "I warned you."

He had. Dammit. Monroe poked the Grimm in the side, making him jump. "It's your job to entertain me."

Nick slapped at his hand, glaring. "Why is it _my_ job?"

"Dude, you're a guest in my car. Manners."

"You invited yourself along," Nick reminded him and focused on his work again. "And insisted on driving." After a moment he added, "We could play the Name Game."

"How about _not_."

"Tic Tac Toe?"

"Ha, I'd wipe the floor with you."

"Truth or Dare?"

"Yeah, because _that_ would end well."

"I've got nothing to hide," Nick said, bringing out a smirk. "I Spy?" he asked and Monroe was sure he wasn't imagining the sly tone.

"I've been warned about you and question games," Monroe informed him. "Hank _warned_ me!"

Nick smiled without looking up and dug a tissue out of his pocket. He'd been fighting a cold all week. "You win one or two or three or _nine_ bets at work and they all think you're cheating. Wu just really sucks at I Spy. He _always_ picks the first blue thing he sees. Always. I paid for the TV in the living room that way."

Monroe laughed and looked out at the street again. It had been misting for most of the day, leaving the blacktop wet and shiny in the light from the streetlamps. Nights like this cut down on visibility even for a _blutbad_. If they'd been in Nick's SUV he would have been having flashbacks to that night two weeks ago when they pulled him out of that cage. But they weren't in Nick's SUV and he was a grown man who did _not_ have panic attacks because it was raining.

The steering wheel creaked and he realized he was gripping it so tight he'd left finger impressions in it.

Nick looked up at him, frowning a little, but he was tactful enough not to say anything. He gazed out the window for several long moments then he said, "In the letter my Aunt said someone was after her. Any guesses as to who it might be?"

Monroe pointed out, bluntly, "There are a lot of people out there who've lost family to Grimms."

Nick winced and looked away. It was hard to find out you came from a family of serial killers. After a moment he blew a breath out. "She said that they would come after me. You don't think it's a random wesen seeking revenge?"

"Maybe." Monroe tapped a finger on the steering wheel. "There is a group—an order—of wesen dedicated to…eradicating Grimms. They have some big fancy name but we mostly just call them Reapers. They carry these scythes so, yeah, um, Reapers. I think they were originally formed to police the Grimms and hunt down the occasional rogues but now…well, they, uh, live up to their name."

"Great," Nick said bitterly and sniffed hard. "Just when I think this can't get any worse."

"Word is spreading that there's a Grimm in Portland," Monroe said carefully. "And when I say spreading I mean all over the world."

Nick gave him a look of disbelief. "Why would the world care?"

"Because you're a Grimm," Monroe explained in a slow, even tone and didn't add DUH because he thought that might be a little rude. Also, he figured it was implied. "That makes you the Brittney Spears of the wesen world. They're either going to love you or hate you."

Nick gave him the stink eye. "I think I liked it better when you compared me to boy-band singers."

"It's an evolving insult," he explained happily. "Hey, it's also out there that you're not the kind to just behead everyone you come across."

Nick sighed then snuffled into his Kleenex. "Good to know. But eventually these Reapers are going to show up." He paused for a sip of coffee. "Is there someone I can talk to about that?"

"Well, I wouldn't suggest talking to the Reapers."

Nick gave him a _no shit_ look.

"I guess if you could find the local Royal, he might be able to offer some advice on that." Perhaps even protection. Monroe knew a couple people he could ask, maybe get word out there that the Grimm was looking for a meeting.

"Royal?"

"Oh yeah. I mean, _I've_ never seen him, but I heard there was a Prince here when I moved in. It was one of the selling points. That and the coffee." Lord knows it wasn't the weather.

Nick looked up at him curiously. "Why?"

"I heard good things from the realtor." It hadn't been easy finding one who was willing to work with a _blutbad_. "Apparently he's less 'off with your head' and more of a 'don't fuck up and I won't kill you' type."

"And you think _this_ guy would help the situation?"

"That sort of attitude is a _huge_ step up, trust me. My great-grandparents immigrated to America to get away from the royal families and the whole rigmarole of death and destruction that went with them."

Nick stared at him, hair falling into his eyes.

"What? I'm just saying you should _talk_ to this guy. You could use an ally with connections. And even if he's not willing to keep the Reaper's off your back, it wouldn't hurt to know who he is."

"How would I contact him?"

Monroe hummed thoughtfully. "With a Prince it's more like you put out word that you want a meeting and one of his minions will contact you."

Nick's frowny thinking line appeared on his forehead. "How do I put out word?"

"I can ask around. Your _eisbiber_ friends might know. The masons have always been involved in the Families one way or another since before they were _the_ Families." Aware that had come out a little bitter Monroe squinted out the window at a shadowy shape running across the street. It was raining harder now, pounding angrily down on the car, but in the way of weather in the Northwest it probably wouldn't last long.

"Green does not become you," Nick said, looking back down at his notebook, applying pen to paper again. "And they're not my friends. They're terrified of me." He jabbed the pen into the paper hard enough it tore. "_Everyone's_ terrified of me." He paused for a heartbeat. "Or they try to kill me."

Monroe opened his mouth, endeavoring to think of some sort of helpful response to that and came up blank. It was true. Even the _eichhörnchen_ who had approached Nick for help had been so fearful they'd barely been able to get a word out of the normally loquacious wesen. "Hey, the squirrels came to you for help with their neighborhood protection problem. That's a good start."

"You want to know why I _really_ became a cop?" Nick asked softly. "The guy who came to tell me my parents were dead. Notifications are horrible no matter the reason but telling a sixteen year old kid his entire family is gone…." Nick stopped and took a slightly shaky breath. "Afterwards he stopped by occasionally to see how I was doing. Gave me a tour of the station. Took me on ride-alongs a couple times when he was still in patrol. It was interesting and he _helped_ people."

"I knew it!" Monroe crowed triumphantly.

"What?"

"Nothing. Just won a bet with myself. Sorry. Go on."

Nick had his _Monroe is bug-fuck crazy_ look on but it was a fond more than exasperated look these days. "There's not much more to say."

"No, no I get it. You became a cop because you wanted to help people."

"Yeah, _help_ people. Not scare them to death." One side of his mouth curled up. "Well, I do like scaring the bad guys a leeetle bit." He held up his fingers a gnat's width apart. "_That's_ really useful sometimes. But the rest….. I don't like them looking at me like I would jump them if they breathed wrong."

"Nah, man, that's just because they don't know you yet."

Nick choked on a laugh. "Well, maybe I should throw a party."

Actually…. Monroe hummed thoughtfully. No. No, no, no, that would only end in bloodshed and tears. Unless…..

Silence fell over the car again. He stretched his legs into a more comfortable position and listened to the rain hammering on the roof and Nick's slightly congested breathing. If they sat here much longer they were going to steam up the windows.

"I almost forgot," Nick said abruptly. Digging into his pocket he came out with some sort of metal trinket. "Hank said that when you interviewed the _eishexe_ she claimed she was after the keys."

"Yes."

Nick fiddled with the thing until it unfolded. "Are you sure she said 'keys' plural? Or was it…key?"

"Oh, wow. That is very cool." He took the thing when Nick offered and examined it, opening and closing it a few times. "Antique?"

"No idea," Nick admitted. "It showed up in the mail yesterday."

"Regular mail? From your Aunt."

"Postmarked two days ago."

"Mysterious. You're sure she's dead."

"I sent a sample of the ashes off to get DNA tested just in case."

Monroe fake-coughed, "Paranoid."

Nick shrugged and took the trinket back, folding it up and tucking it in his pocket. "There was a note that said to keep this safe and trust no one."

"Whoa, very X-Files."

Nick rolled his eyes and went back to his drawing. "Does that make you the guy who shows up when there's an X taped on Mulder's window?"

"Ha. I'm much more helpful. Plus you can just call me on my phone."

"Convenient," Nick agreed without looking up. "What I want to know is how the _eishexe_ knew Marie had sent me anything at all. She—or someone—must have been watching her."

"Or got to someone she trusted," Monroe mused. "Maybe your aunt knew she was being watched. Maybe that's why she had this sent separately."

"Maybe." Nick's pen was still but he didn't lift his eyes from the paper. "I wish I could have talked to her."

Monroe tried several responses to that out in his head but none of them sounded right and silence fell again. He should have brought a book. Were books allowed on stakeouts? Nick had pulled out his notebook not long after they had parked and was now working on a fresh page.

Monroe tapped his fingers in a riff from the song he'd practiced yesterday. Maybe some music. He turned the radio on low. Just a little background noise. Yep, should have brought a book.

He took a breath to speak—

"If you're that bored," Nick said before he could open his mouth, "you suggest something then."

"What do you and Hank do when you're on a boring stakeout?"

"Mostly?" Nick glanced up at him. "We talk about work."

Work, huh. He could do that. "So how is the, uh, investigation into the cult going?"

Nick leaned over to grab his coffee out of the cup holder again. "Slow, but we're making progress. Besides the alleged human trafficking, the Feds are looking at him as a suspect in a cluster of serial kidnappings and rapes in New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Idaho."

"Wow, he's been…busy."

"Yeah." Nick scowled at his cup. "We're doing our best to keep the investigation circumspect so the guy doesn't rabbit on us. Or pull a Jonestown."

Monroe grimaced at the thought and picked up his own coffee for a long sip. "I'm surprised he didn't make you as a Grimm when you didn't fall at his feet in worshipful adoration." Most wesen would have been on the freeway out of town the minute Nick turned his back.

"Yeah, I've been wondering that too," Nick admitted. "This guy has a new identity in every state. Why hasn't he hit the road already? Even if he _didn't_ realize I was a Grimm."

"Maybe he doesn't think he will get caught. _Ziegevolk_ are used to getting their way."

Nick shook his head. "Maybe. His ego is big enough. But this guy has a history of abandoning ship when things get hot. Over the past six years seventeen women in four states have all turned up pregnant with little to no memory of how they got that way. When they ran DNA it came back identical in every case. They all had the same father." He dropped his own coffee back in the cup holder. "How could you look at your child every day knowing that?"

Monroe shook his head. He wondered if Capra had stuck with impregnating human women who wouldn't know what kind of baby it was. "You know you aren't going to be able to arrest him. Or well, you _can_, but he'll get out of it one way other another. _Ziegevolk_ don't go to jail. The only way to deal with them is—" He mimed a cutting motion across his throat with the hand holding the coffee cup.

"I know," Nick muttered. He focused hard on the expanse of wet street. "I've known since that day Capra shook my hand. I guess it had to happen at some point."

"What had to happen?"

A muscle twitched in his jaw. "That the Grimm would win over the cop."

Damn, he had the big, angsty eyes going, like the world had personally stepped on his pet cricket or something.

"A couple years after graduation," Nick said softly, "one of my classmates from the academy was involved in an…altercation during a traffic stop. Pulled the guy over to tell him his headlight wasn't working and the guy got out of the truck with a hunting rifle in his hands."

"Well that's not smart."

Nick huffed a weak laugh. "Not so much no. Afterwards they found out the guy had no criminal record, no history of violence, no trouble in his family life, no drugs or alcohol in his system. No one knows why he wouldn't put the gun down. We went out for a beer a couple months ago. He said he still wakes up sweating over whether he did the right thing."

"I'm sure it will get easier after the first time," Monroe suggested then winced because…yeah, that probably wasn't particularly reassuring. "But at least you know it is the right thing to do. This guy has gone large scale. Imagine how many people he would hurt if you don't get rid of him…permanently."

Nick nodded but Monroe figured it was an acknowledgement that he'd heard not that he found Monroe's advice useful or comforting.

A new scent drifted through the crack he'd left in the window, distracting him from the conversation.

"You got something?" Nick asked, straightening.

"Maybe." He took a couple deep sniffs. The rain had eased up and the heavy smell of wet pavement permeated the air. "Nah, just another _eichhörnchen_. The whole neighborhood is probably full of them."

Nick sighed and slumped back into the seat. "Tell me about them."

"_Eichhörnchen_?"

"Yes. They came to me for help." Snuffle. "I want to know more about them."

"Well, they've very squirrel…like. They flit around and do…squirrel things."

"Thorough, Monroe, very thorough."

"I don't exactly hang out with them," Monroe grumped. "_Eichhörnchen_ and _blutbad_? That's just a snack waiting to happen."

"Ewwww."

Monroe chuckled. He was so easy. "They're territorial. Easily startled, but you don't want to corner them. Man, one of the guys from group got into a spat with one at the bar." Monroe chuckled at the memory. "He looked like he'd been scratched up by an _angriff-katze_. And they like the upper floors of buildings. You usually find them living next to parks. Usually in groups."

Nick nodded. "So. Squirrel-like."

"That's what I'm saying." Thinking about squirrels made him hungry. He dug into his snack bag and pulled out a can of peanuts.

Nick blew out a heavy breath. "Half an hour and I'm calling it."

"The weather's horrible. Maybe they're not out tonight."

"I doubt their boss will accept rain as an excuse not collecting this month's protection money." He shook his head when Monroe offered the peanuts, which Monroe was grateful for because Nick probably would put up a fuss about Monroe pouring them into his hand. No way was he letting those germ infested digits near his nuts.

Silence settled in. Again. Broken by an occasional sniffle and, very faintly, someone's car alarm from two streets over.

Monroe broke first. "Alright fine. I Spy with my little eye—"

"Bad guys," Nick interrupted. He pointed.

"Actually I was going to say the mailbox but I like that better. Is that them?"

Nick grabbed the photos off the dash, angling them into the light from the street lamp just down the street. They were grainy and angled too high for a good look at the faces but…. "That's them," Nick said confidently.

Monroe got a whiff through the open window. "They certainly smell like _gekautvicious_."

Nick tucked the photos into his coat pocket. "I'm going to talk to them. You—" he stabbed a demanding finger in Monroe's direction, "—stay in the car."

"Oh sure." Monroe held up both hands to declare his intent to never get out of the car again. "Bystander here. You go," he waved a hand, "go…get your Grimm on."

Nick stared at him, one leg out the door. "Get your _Grimm_ on? Really?"

"Just go threaten them so we can wrap this up and I can go home." He gave Nick a helpful little push to get him going.

The Grimm stumbled and grabbed for the door to keep from face planting onto the cement. Leaning down he glared at Monroe who made a little GO gesture with his fingers.

The two _gekautvicious_ had stopped and were watching them half wary, half amused and not at all suspecting they were about to be confronted by a monster straight out of their worst nightmare.

Nick sneezed. He reached in to retrieve his tissue where it had fallen, glared at Monroe again, and slammed the door _far_ harder than was _necessary,_ and stalked off towards the two wesen. He started talking to them, using that calm, quiet voice he brought out for small children and people who really pissed him of and Monroe couldn't make out what he was saying over the hiss of rain and rumbled of a passing delivery truck but he could guess as he watched Nick show them his badge.

That was where things began to go wrong.

It wasn't surprising really. Things _tended_ to go wrong when a Grimm and two law-breaking wesen were brought together on a dark and stormy night. So, so wrong. In this case it involved the two wesen bolting into the nearest alley while Nick yelled at them to stop and halt and freeze and pulled his gun.

Monroe sighed and got out of the car, hurrying after them. This was going to end badly, he just _knew_ it. The sound of a gunshot had him stepping up the pace. Yep, going to end badly.

He rounded the corner expecting blood and guts and multiple gunshot wounds.

And found both suspects on their bellies on the ground. Nick had one handcuffed already and was kneeling on the other one, hauling his hands behind his back.

Okay, _that_ he was not expecting. "Whoa, dude." The handcuffed one was babbling something about how he should have listened to his mama and stayed in Pensacola. "I'm impressed."

"Again with the getting out of the car," Nick said mildly, pulling out a zip tie to secure the second perp.

"I thought you might need help." He walked a few steps closer, taking care to stay out of the way.

Nick yanked the zip tie tight and looked up with a smile. "Thanks, but I've got it."

"I see that." Monroe felt an unfamiliar welling in his chest; his little Grimm was growing up.

"You don't need to sound so surprised," Nick said, leaning towards aggravated but it was ruined by a sniffle. "I actually do this for a living you know."

"But your arrests before," Monroe objected, "didn't include people who were stronger and faster than you. Or, okay, I suppose they _did_, you just didn't know it."

Nick stood, wiping uselessly at the wet patches on his jeans. "Yeah, the good old days when we just assumed everyone _weird_ was on drugs and had an excuse for _not stopping when the guy with the gun and the badge told them to_." The last part he directed towards the two men on the ground.

"Does that ever actually work?" Monroe asked.

"Sometimes." He added mockingly, "I thought about telling them to stop or I would release the dog but I figured you wouldn't appreciate it."

"Har, har."

"Do you suppose I could become a K9 officer now?" Nick asked grinning broad enough Monroe could see his teeth in the faint light. "I've heard they make more money."

Monroe huffed. "Maybe then _you_ could buy the beer once in a while."

"Ha. Do me a favor and watch these guys while I call it in. Unless you want to haul them down to the station in your car."

Monroe moved closer. "Ha, like I'd let a _gekautvicious_ anywhere near my upholstery. I'd never get the stink out."

The handcuffed wesen hissed at him, showing sharp teeth and a long forked tongue. Monroe growled back, flashing red eyes.

"Hey! Both of you! Stop it!" Nick stood, deliberately bumping into Monroe hard enough to knock him back half a step. "Just watch them." He pulled out his cell phone and moved down the alley a bit to make the call.

It turned out that there was a _lot_ of paperwork involved when a police officer fired his weapon even if no one was shot. He's missed out on that during the _eishexe_ case.

When Nick's boss showed up, Monroe retreated to his car, determined to stay there unless someone came and made him get out. There was something about that man that made Monroe's hackles stand at attention. It didn't help that every time Renard saw him there was a little pause in whatever he was doing as if he was surprised all over again that Monroe existed. It gave him the heebie-jeebies.

Eventually Nick came over and knocked on the window until he rolled it down. "You might as well head on home." They're falling all over themselves to be the first to roll over on their boss so Renard is calling in an ADA and getting the paperwork started. We'll be serving warrants on at least two more people before morning."

"You want me to stick around and give you a lift?" Monroe asked because it was the polite thing to do not because he wanted to hang around with a dozen cops and Nick's scary boss staring at him.

"Nah, I'll catch a ride. Come down tomorrow morning. We'll need a statement."

"Sure, man. What time?"

"Whenever you're up." He leaned a little closer. "Thanks for the backup."

"Next time it's Hank's turn," Monroe told him. He wouldn't have been there at all if Hank called to say he was down with the Hantavirus or stomach flu or something equally horrible that he had undoubtedly passed on to Nick and would Monroe take over for him.

Nick got a look on his face that usually meant he was going to say something stupid about being a grownup and not needing a babysitter which was, well, _stupid_ because _gekautvicious_ were mean bastards who had been known to cannibalize their own dead. The last time they'd let Nick go out on his own he'd ended up with a sprained finger, a mild concussion, and a pathetically thin cover story about an attempted mugging while he was jogging. Alone. At night. In a park across town from his house.

"Don't give me that look, Monroe," he said instead. He thumped the car door once and pushed off. "Thanks again."

"Hey." Monroe handed him the travel pack of Kleenex he kept in the car. "And take this." He grabbed a scarf from the back seat. "Don't stay out in the cold too long," he ordered and rolled up the window, wiping at the door where the rain had gotten in.

When he got home he couldn't sit still. He'd gone into the alley expecting a fight and ended up standing around while Nick did all the work. Adrenaline made his hands shaky as he poured a glass of water and drank it straight down. There was no way he was going to sleep like this. With a sigh he gave in and changed into clothes he didn't mind ruining and headed for the park across the street.

It wasn't the first time he'd ended up needing a run to settle his nerves after one of his extracurricular activities. He sincerely doubted it would be the last.

TBC


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes: ** Whew. Really, really long chapter.

**Warnings: **Language, implied imprisonment, implied drugging, noncom, impregnation, some unintentional man-bashing, gratuitous use of bananas (oh my God not like _that!_), more Nick whump (yeah, like that surprises anybody at this point).

() () ()

Six days later the morning news was abuzz with news of a joint PPD/FBI raid on the woodland compound of New Beginnings. Twenty-six members taken into custody the Portland Tribune claimed while the Oregonian reported that cult leader Billy Capra was still at large.

Monroe was so _not_ surprised by that he didn't even stop eating his grapefruit. Unless Capra did something truly stupid and got himself shot the only one who was going to be able do anything permanent was Nick. And although he didn't like the idea of a _ziegevolk_ running around loose, he was glad Nick hadn't been forced into that choice quiet yet.

The picture on the screen was the same one from the brochure. Reasonably good looking man, flashy dresser, neatly trimmed hair, and a smug, knowing look.

There was a lot of footage of a mansion in the forest surrounded by cop cars and crime scene tape, all of it shot from behind a tall, wrought iron fence. Nick's Captain gave a brief press conference in front of the massive stone and iron gates. The FBI operations head said some words commending Portland PD for their fine work, blah, blah, blah.

Monroe spotted Hank in the background and he wasn't bleeding or missing any limbs so that was good. There was no sign of Nick, which he hoped meant the man was safely tucked away in the office not alone in the woods chasing Capra.

He watched until they started repeating themselves then went back to his exercises. He'd hear the story straight from the Grimm's mouth soon enough.

It was on the TV in the coffee house when he swung by after a delivery for a well-deserved treat. "Those poor girls," the barista tisked to another female customer. "I heard that over half of them were pregnant."

"They should nail that bastard to the wall when they catch him," the other woman said, nodding agreement with herself so hard her heavy brown hair fell over her eyes.

Monroe took his coffee and backed away slowly, making no sudden movements. He realized suddenly why the men in the shop (and probably all over the city) were keeping their heads down.

It was the same at the library and the grocery. When he got home he watched the news again out of morbid curiosity. Eventually he gave up and went to make dinner because there wasn't much new beyond updates on the search for Capra and, yes, _tonight_ was the premier of the newest doctor/lawyer/cop/reality TV show.

He'd just pulled the pan from the oven when he smelled Nick. "Perfect timing," he said, opening the door while Nick's hand was still lifted to knock.

Nick gave him a suspicious look.

"I just got dinner out of the oven." He stepped aside, gesturing the other man in. "You have got to try a bananatini. Completely non-alcoholic I assure you. I got the recipe off the internet so, you know, you never _know_, but it's actually not bad."

"Oh, sorry, I can't stay. I promised Juliette I would be home before she went to bed at least once this week." He ran a hand through his hair, scraping it back from his face.

Monroe looked at him, really _looked_, as he shook and poured out the drink and handed it over. "You look like hell. Been busy?" At least he was no longer sniffing and dripping like a leaky faucet and miraculously Monroe had managed to avoid catching his sneaky Grimm germs. It probably helped that he hadn't actually seen much of the man since their stakeout to catch the _gekautvicious_ last week.

Nick had at least emailed him a few days afterwards with the news that the two collections agents had made a deal to flip on their boss in exchange for not being prosecuted for assault on a cop. And Renard had apparently bought his flimsy cover story about the two of them walking to a bar down the street and being accosted by the two _gekautvicious_. Monroe wasn't sure Nick's boss was that oblivious or that practiced at looking the other way.

"You've been watching it." Nick gestured towards the TV with the martini glass as he sagged onto his favorite chair with a groan. "Oh, God. I've been stuck in the surveillance van for four days. I don't think the FBI sleeps. Literally. I was offered some kind of stay-awake pill I'm not sure is even legal in Oregon _three_ different times."

"Did you take them?" He had, Monroe could smell the taint of chemicals on him, but it was faint, a few days old at least.

"Yeah," Nick admitted. "Once." He grinned suddenly, like a kid with a secret. "I didn't sleep for two days."

"Most people wouldn't think that's a good thing," Monroe chastised but he knew it was hopeless. Nick was in some ways still very young. "I can't believe Hank let you do that."

"Ummmm…."

Monroe sighed. "He took them too, didn't he?"

"Maybe," Nick hedged shiftily.

"He's a bad influence."

"Yep," Nick agreed unashamedly. He noticed the glass in his hand and took a tiny sip of bananatini. "That's…odd." He took another sip and made a thinking face.

"Not that I'm not happy to see you but is there a reason you came by tonight if not to mooch my food?"

"Oh, yeah, I wanted to give you these." Digging into a pocket he produced a folded manila envelope. "I just got them this afternoon."

Didn't even deny the food mooching Monroe noted as he took the envelope. Not even a sarcastic comment. He really must be tired. Flipping up the little prongy-thingys Monroe opened the flap and shook out a square of folded papers and a small, laminated card. He unfolded the papers and found that they were photocopies of some sort of official documents. "Um, what is it?"

Nick picked his chin up off his hand and straightened out of a profound slump in the chair. "Congratulations you are now on the list of people who add to the paperwork in my life."

"Wait—what—I'm what now?"

"You're on the department's authorized consultant list," Nick said, grinning like he'd just given Monroe the best present ever.

Monroe turned the laminated card over to read the back. "Don't you have to do a background check for that kind of thing?"

Nick blinked at him innocently. "Yes, but the Captain agreed that one misdemeanor public nudity charge in college wasn't a problem."

Red wasn't Monroe's best color either. Also, that wasn't what he'd been worried about, but if Nick hadn't found anything else he sure wasn't going to bring it up. "Oh, yeah, that…well, you know, college."

"Relax, Monroe," Nick said, getting out of the chair with a groan. "I handled it myself and the Captain signed off on it. You're officially official."

"Wait, how did you even _get_ my fingerprints?"

"You drink a lot of beer," Nick told him seriously, "and recycle the bottles."

"Oh. That's… rather disturbing." He flicked the edge of the card with a finger. "Do I get a badge?"

Nick snorted. "No."

"A gun?"

"Oh hell no."

"Do I get paid?"

"Yes. When on _official_ business."

"Hmmmm…. So _not_ Grimm business."

Nick rolled his eyes and smirked. "I'm sure they'll overlap from time to time. There's a form in there you need to fill out if you want direct deposit." Nick bumped shoulders with him. "Stop pretending you don't think this is the coolest thing ever."

It was pretty cool.

"And this way if something happens like the last time you'll be protected—"

It had taken a couple days for Monroe to figure out Nick _still_ blamed himself a little bit for Monroe's kidnapping. Never mind he would have probably _died_ in one of their cage matches without Nick tossing centuries of protocol out the window and making friends with _beavers_. Without Bud putting out the word that Monroe was friendly with the Grimm (Sidekick! Hah!) that _eisbiber_ would have kept his head down and scurried right on by a _blutbad_ being accosted in the street and breathed a sigh of relief at one less predator in the world.

"—you'll be one of us," Nick finished, looking a little anxious as if Monroe would turn him down. "Now I'll be able to _officially_ show you all those files I've already been showing you."

"Cool."

Nick's smile broke out, big and bright. "I'd better head home. Juliette said she would cook if I stopped by the store." He handed over the martini glass. "Thanks, that was…still odd."

"Hold on I have a Tupperware to return. I'll put some banana bread in it." There had been a bag sale at the farmers market of almost overripe bananas he hadn't been able to resist. He'd been making banana smoothies, banana cookies, banana pudding, banana bread, and he was taking banana cream pie to group this week. Fetching the Tupperware he pressed it into Nick's hands and walked him to the door, watching him drive away.

Tomorrow was Saturday. He had plans to go downtown and watch the game at the bar with a couple of the guys after group. Tucking the laminated card into his wallet he thought it sucked that he couldn't show it off. They knew about the Grimm of course, everyone in town knew at this point, but it hadn't seemed safe or wise to tell them that he knew Nick personally. Maybe he could tell them the PD needed his invaluable knowledge of timepieces. It could happen.

He finished dinner, washed the dishes and put away the leftovers, and sat down to watch his evening programs while he worked on a jigsaw puzzle he'd picked up at a flea market last summer and only just re-found during a closet cleaning frenzy. It was a beautiful 3D version of the _Harmonices Mundi_. He was trying not to read anything into that.

Jigsaw puzzles were a weakness he'd picked up in rehab. He'd learned early on that he had to limit how long he could work on them or he would see the sun rise with a crick in his back and dry, aching eyes. When his phone started ringing he thought for a second that it was the timer going off.

Fumbling it out of his pocket he pushed the button, "Monroe."

"Hey, it's Juliette."

"Oh, hey." Finding the remote, he muted the TV. "Hi."

"I was just wondering if Nick was there?"

"No, well, he was but he left," he paused to check the time, "about three hours ago."

"Oh. Did he give you the paperwork?"

"Yes," he said burst out happily.

"He's been so excited." Her voice was warm and full of amusement. "I didn't think he'd be able to keep it a secret."

"I was completely surprised."

"A good surprised, right?"

Monroe admitted, "It's pretty cool." It was so, _so_ cool. He was grinning like an idiot, glad no one was there to see.

"Good. Hey, sorry about cancelling on you yesterday." She paused long enough he was ready to speak when she added, "I had a doctor's appointment."

Poking through the pile of puzzle pieces with one finger he said, "Nothing bad I hope." He hadn't noticed anything during the last yoga class.

"False alarm," she said, sounding happy and a sad both.

"False alarm," Monroe repeated dumbly, finger paused where it was buried in the pile of puzzle bits. "What—oh. Ohhhhhh. That kind of false alarm." But that meant— "Oh my God."

"Yes, Monroe," she said dryly. "_That_ kind of false alarm."

"Are you sure?"

She chuckled. "Yes. Hence the doctor visit. Got the results in today, definitely negative."

"Is that good or, um, bad?"

There was a little sigh into the phone. "Somewhere in between I think. Our life is sooooo complicated right now. This isn't the time to bring a child into it."

"But…?" There was definitely a _but_ in there.

"When I told Nick I was late he just lit up. Well, first we had a whole 'W_ho's On First' _moment because he didn't realize I meant _late_ not that I was late for work, but then he was so _happy_." Another low sigh. "And then _I_ started thinking about which room would make the best nursery and how we'd arrange our schedules and I was _relieved_ when the test results came in negative but…I guess I was a sort of sad too."

Monroe hadn't thought about children in a long time. Angelina hadn't been the baby-sling, shopping-for-diapers kind of girl and after her, well…. It had been a long time since he'd even considered it. Juliette though, she was the kind of freakishly competent mom who would do PTA and carpool and bake dinosaur cakes for birthdays and tell her kids to stop being idiots in the middle of the grocery store instead of letting them throw tantrums about not getting candy. "You'll make a great mom. When the time comes. And Nick will make a great dad."

"He will." She laughed but it was small and shaky. "Now I just have to figure out how to tell him it won't be right now."

"I think," he began hesitantly, afraid he was overstepping some sort of invisible human social boundary, "I think he'll be a little relieved too."

"You're probably right. Are we still on for yoga next week?"

"Of course." He went back to searching through the pile for the right puzzle piece.

"I'll see if I can talk Nick into coming too."

Ha. There it was. "He could certainly use the stress relief." Monroe carefully fitted the piece into place. Only nine hundred and sixty-four to go. Woo hoo.

"Well, I was thinking more of the flexibility but, sure, that too."

"Ewww, TMI. T. M. I."

She giggled into the phone. "Goodnight, Monroe," she sing-songed and hung up.

He put the phone down and did a couple puzzle pieces but he couldn't concentrate with that little nagging worry in the back of his mind. Nick always answered the phone unless he was in court. He even answered the phone when he should ignore it.

He got Nick's voicemail the first time. Got a busy signal the second time, which was probably Juliette trying again. He thought about it for a few minutes then called Hank.

Hank hadn't seen him since they'd left work. "I just got off the phone with Juliette. She said he was going to stop by the grocery on the way home."

Monroe heard him yawn, turning away from the phone to muffle it, and wondered if he'd woken the other man. "Yeah, that's what he told me too. That was over three hours ago. Maybe I'm overreacting—" He was probably overreacting. Hank would tell him he was overreacting.

Hank went silent for a moment. "Let me make a call. I'll get back to you."

"That was not as reassuring as I expected," Monroe said to the dial tone. Ten long minutes later Hank called back.

"His phone says he's inside the store."

"Oh, well then." See nothing to worry about. Totally overreacting. Nick was apparently just a _really_ slow shopper.

"When I couldn't get through on his cell I called the store and had them page him. They tried three times."

"That isn't good."

"Nope." Hank's chair squeaked as he stood up with a groan. "I'm headed over there right now."

"I'll meet you," Monroe said. He hung up before Hank could tell him no and grabbed his coat and car keys. The store Nick and Juliette used wasn't far from their house; he'd been seen the bags in their house and once Nick had brought croissants along with his early morning questions in a bakery bag with the store logo on the front.

As he pulled into the lot he saw Hank's car parked crossways behind Nick's SUV. Taking a parking spot three cars down, Monroe got out and headed over. Juliette was there, wrapped in a knee-length pink coat, arms folded tightly across her chest as she watched Hank talking on his cell.

"I assume from the apparent lack of Grimm that you haven't had any luck," Monroe said as he got closer.

"I went through the store," Juliette said, shaking her head before she even got the first word out. "I even had one of the stock boys check the bathroom. I think he thinks I'm a crazy stalker or something."

Hank hung up. "Tech says his phone still puts him in the store. Can you track him," he asked Monroe, "like you did the _eishexe_?"

Monroe took a deep breath. "Maybe." The trail was hours old and diluted by several dozen people, vehicles, animals, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. "If we were in the forest, no problem. Trying to sniff someone out in a city isn't easy."

"You can smell him?" Juliette asked.

Deep breath. "Yeah. He definitely went that way." Monroe gestured towards the store.

Hank motioned him on. "Let's go."

At this point he knew Nick's scent by heart. Knew Juliette's and Hank's too, but Nick had been in his house, in his car, in his clothes on one memorable occasion involving a _muerte__-__cazador_ working for the city road kill crew. He'd had to roll up all the cuffs and Monroe had secretly text-giggled with Juliette about how adorable that had been for days afterwards.

The scent muddled when they reached the sidewalk in front of the store. "Wait."

"What is it?" Juliette asked.

"He went in." Monroe sniffed. "And he came back out." It was only _slightly_ fresher than the trail into the store. "Not long after. He went…there." The reserved space right in the front. "He got in a car right here." Stepping off the curb he walked around the blue line border that denoted handicapped parking. "I've smelled this before. I—oh, wow. Oh, man this is not good."

"Monroe," Hank barked, "what?"

"It's wolfsbane. Someone is covering their scent."

"What's wolfsbane?" Juliette asked.

Monroe explained, "It's an herb used to confuse a _blutbad_'s sense of smell."

"They knew you would be here," Hank theorized. "They knew you would be looking for him."

"So someone _planned_ this?" Juliette asked anxiously.

Hank said, "It's looking that way," and pulled his phone out again. "Let's head inside. You two see if you can find his cell and be careful. Whoever did this might have friends."

Monroe gave him a nod over Juliette's head. He'd keep an eye on her.

"Where are you going?" Juliette asked as they got inside.

"To find the manager." He gestured towards the ceiling. "There are a lot of security cameras in here."

They split up. Monroe followed his nose but stores were like bio-spheres, their own little self-contained environment of scents.

"I texted him a list," Juliette said, face pinched and guilty. She pointed towards the produce section. "Eggplant and tomatoes and snow peas."

Monroe's nose agreed. He stopped in front of the apple bins. "He was here."

Juliette walked over to a shopping cart that had been pushed to one side. "This might have been his." She picked up an eggplant from the basket.

"Call his number," Monroe suggested. "Maybe we can hear the phone."

She dug her phone out of her purse and dialed. "He might have had the ringer turned off."

Sure enough Monroe heard the _buzz, buzz, buzz_ of a phone on vibrate and tracked it back to the apple bin, shoved down in the Golden Delicious.

Juliette called Hank. "We found it. In the produce section."

"I'm looking at you right now," Hank said. "I'll back track the video footage and see what I can find. Meet you outside in ten."

Juliette hung up and looked at him. "Did you catch all that?"

"Yes." He circled again, searching for anything he might have missed, and caught a hint of something. Just a whiff but it was familiar and yet not quite right. Frowning he tried to find it again but lost it under the overload of body spray of a mother and teenage son passing by.

"What is it?" She was wrapped up in her coat, arms folded tightly.

Monroe shook his head. "Nothing. Let's get something warm while we wait." He had a feeling they were going to need it.

They headed for the espresso bar in the corner near the front door and ordered three coffees. "Who do you think would do this?" she asked as they waited.

Monroe had to admit that there were a lot of choices. "I don't know. If they hadn't used wolfsbane I could have at least narrowed it down."

Frowning absently at the choice of creamer packets in the basket next to the register, she said, "Grocery shopping days are Wednesday and Saturday. Hardly ever on Tuesdays unless one of us ducks in to get something special. They either followed him or got lucky."

Wolfsbane wasn't a medicinal herb. It wasn't part of most people's spice set because it was poisonous if you ate it. You could find it in the woods but not in January and there were only a couple places in town that he knew of where it could be purchased all year round. The dry stuff didn't work as well as fresh but it would work. "They've been _planning_ this," he said and held back a sudden urge to woge. It was a gut response to one of _his_ being stalked and threatened.

"Monroe!"

Juliette had given the fresh-faced twenty-something behind the counter his name instead of hers, claiming it took too much time to spell hers out. "And they always have to make a Shakespeare reference." They retrieved their coffee and headed outside. "Nick used to make up stories—" Her voice caught on the last word and she took a hasty drink.

Monroe carefully spent a minute sniffing around the parking space in the front, futility trying to get a better read on their kidnapper, giving her a moment to recover.

"He knew," she continued, "how tired I got of explaining that I wasn't named after the play. He used to make up crazy stories."

"I had wondered." Giving up he stepped back up on the sidewalk. There were too many strong, interfering smells. "Because of the spelling."

"My Aunt Bebe," Juliette explained, making an embarrassed face, "was _big_ into astrology. I was born under Jupiter."

"Ah, the planet of serendipity and luck."

Juliette gave him an impressed look. "Wow. Not many people know that."

Monroe shrugged. "I dated a gypsy. Once."

"I sense an interesting story _there_." She gave him a mischievous look over her coffee, breathing in the steam that curled up around her face.

He shrugged self-consciously. "Not really. I want to hear about your name."

"Oh," she waved the cup in a throw away gesture, "it's not that exciting. Juliette means child of Jove and Jove is—"

"Another name for Jupiter, Roman God of Gods."

"Exactly. I popped out almost a month early. Mom—the big procrastinator—didn't like _any_ of Dad's ideas." She smiled and brushed her hair back over her shoulder. "So when Aunt Bebe had a suggestion they both didn't think was horrible, they jumped on it. I tell myself every time someone quotes Shakespeare at me that at least I wasn't named after Dad's Aunt Agnus."

Monroe moved out of the way of a kid trying to get to the rocket ship ride next to the doors. "That's a really cool story. I got stuck being the namesake of some dead relative I never met." The kid put in a quarter and cranked on the starter knob until the rocket lurched into motion. He noticed Monroe watching him and stuck his tongue out at him. Monroe nearly gave into the urge to make a face in return.

The doors swept open and Hank came out with a grim expression, a handful of grainy printouts, and a shiny CD in one hand. "Billy Capra. Bastard's still driving his fancy car too."

Monroe lost his breath so suddenly his chest hurt. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the kid on the rocket ship get big eyes at Hank's swear word.

"Wait," Juliette said, "the guy the FBI is looking for?" She studied their faces and Monroe could see her growing concern at whatever she saw there. "Why would he even still be in town? And why would he go after Nick?"

Hank and Monroe exchanged guarded looks over her head. "That's what we're going to find out," Hank said. "I already called in an APB in on Capra's car. I need to get this down to tech." He waved the CD. "And brief the Captain."

"I'm coming with you," Juliette told him.

Hank hesitated, clearly wanting to tell her to go home. He shot a look at Monroe that Monroe pretended not to see. No way was he getting in the middle of this.

Juliette mouth tightened stubbornly. "I'm _coming_ with you."

Wise man that he was, Hank backed down. "Do you want to bring your own car or ride with me?"

"Thank you." Juliette handed over the third coffee they had bought, resting a hand on his arm. "Go ahead. I want to drop my car off at home."

"Meet you there." He lifted the coffee cup in a sort of thanks and goodbye combination and hustled off to his car.

"Monroe," she turned to him, tugging her pink coat a little tighter, "will you follow me home and drive me down to the precinct? I want to pick Nick's car up later if they don't take it in for forensics. He wouldn't want it left here."

"Yeah, sure, of course." He hesitated then wrapped his arms around her. "We're going to get him back," he murmured into her red, red hair, closing his eyes as he breathed in her worry and fear and sorrow and vanilla body wash.

She fisted her hands in his coat and nodded fiercely into his shoulder.

TBC

_**Notes:**_ That's right Billy Capra con artist, embezzler, kidnapper, rapist, suspected human trafficker—and he parked in the handicapped space. Does his evil know no bounds? Eh, probably not.


	8. Chapter 8

_**Notes:**_ About halfway through writing this I came to the realization that I had created the whole story just because I wanted Renard to be less evil. Yep.

_**Warnings:**_ Beep, beep, beep, hot load of angst headed right for ya. Also, Renard being all alpha (but not evil).

() () ()

Monroe and Juliette were escorted past reception by a tall, stout man in uniform who knew Juliette by name and took a moment to speak quietly to her. Monroe overheard of course, but he pretended not to and pointedly ignored the hand on her arm because if he didn't ignore it he was going to go over there and take it off, probably with more force than was wise given their surroundings.

Monroe reluctantly admitted to himself that he might very well need to sit Nick down for a talk about _family_ and what that meant to a _blutbad_ and how it kinda, sorta seemed like he might have adopted Nick and Juliette and quite possibly Hank into his life on a permanent basis. With Nick gone, _taken_, his need to protect the other two was through the roof.

"Detective Griffin asked me to tell you there's going to be a briefing in ten minutes."

"Thank you, Marvin."

"You need anything, Miss Juliette, you come find me."

Monroe's relief when handsy-Marvin headed back to his desk lasted until Nick's boss came out of his office. He stopped to speak to Juliette and Monroe's protective hovering kicked into high gear. He did the hand on the arm as well and he must have heard Monroe's near sub-vocal growl. His shoulders twitched and tightened and he looked up and past Juliette and Monroe got a flash of nearly black eyes. It was a warning, Monroe was certain of it, because only after Renard had stared him down for three full heartbeats did he remove his hand.

"Oh," Juliette said, giving Monroe a strange look that proved she's caught onto the undercurrents of tension between the two of them, "I don't know if you've met Monroe?"

"Not formally," Renard rumbled and held out a hand, smiling with far too many teeth. "Captain Sean Renard."

Monroe smiled back, showing just as many teeth. Challenge accepted. "Yeah, we've only seen each other from afar," he explained to Juliette, "at crime scenes."

Renard did not crush his hand as they shook, oh no, he was far too refined for that sort of vulgar display. Monroe tried to do the same but it was hard not to show off his strength just a little and, really, no one had ever accused Mama Monroe's boy of being refined.

Thankfully Hank arrived to interrupt what promised to be an awkwardly long and ambiguous conversation. "We're ready when you are, Captain."

Renard snapped from vaguely threatening mystery-wesen to professional, concerned police captain so fast Monroe was surprised he couldn't hear the rubber band. "Get everyone together."

Monroe thought they would go to a conference room or something, but instead word passed around and in a few minutes the squad room was packed. Late comers found room sitting on desks and standing around the walls. Someone brought a chair for Juliette and Monroe tucked himself in behind it. If he leaned against the wall he was pretty sure he didn't look like he was looming. Much.

"Alright, quiet down!" Renard said loudly enough to be heard at the back of the room. "You all know why you're here. Detective Griffin will fill in the details." He stepped back to let Hank come forward.

Hank was hollow eyed and weary and Monroe wondered how long he'd actually been asleep before the phone had woken him. "First off we've posted the grocery store security camera footage, Capra's FBI file, and any pictures and descriptions we have on the shared server. If you can't find something you need contact Fredericks in IT and he'll get it up as soon as he can."

Gripping the legal pad in his hands a little tighter he continued, "We've released pictures of Detective Burkhardt, William Capra, and Capra's car to the media as well as selected clips from the security video." He gestured at the TV mounted in the corner of the room where the six o'clock news as in the middle of a Breaking Story.

"They're posting the number for the tip line," Renard added, "so expect the phones to start ringing. Emergency dispatchers have been instructed to pass on any and _all_ tips. Anything that seems promising gets sent directly to Detective Griffin or myself. Anything else gets checked out by a detective or patrol. _Every_ call will get a response. I don't care if it's the junkie on the corner who wears tin foils hats and thinks the aliens are stealing his shoelaces. Every tip that comes in _will_ be checked and double checked or you will _explain_ _to_ _me_ why it wasn't."

Silence. No one so much as squeaked a shoe against the floor. A couple of the other cops woged nervously. Monroe couldn't blame them; Renard was putting off serious alpha vibes.

Hank cleared his throat. "An APB for Capra's car has been issued for Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, and California. Past history says this guy is a runner when it gets hot. We have to assume he may be out of the state by now. Also, we're tracking down the woman who was seen with Capra in the grocery store video. Her picture was also released to the media. At this point we're acting under the assumption that she was only peripherally involved with the Detective Burkhardt's disappearance and will hopefully turn herself in."

A stir went through the room but otherwise they remained respectfully quiet.

"We have checkpoints on the major arterials. AMTRAK, Greyhound, and Portland International have been notified and we have officers on site. Smaller airports, taxi companies, car rentals, and the rest have been sent the Be-On-The-Lookout info and we're at about sixty percent on getting pictures out to them. Sergeant Wu has a list of numbers that still need info sent to them if you have a fax machine available in your department."

Several hands went up. "See me after the briefing," Wu said, waving a file folder from his position near the door to Renard's office.

Hank took a deep breath and looked at his legal pad. "Portland Department of Transportation is tracking the Capra's movements after leaving the grocery store. Sergeant Schmooter is their liaison. She's also coordinating with ODOT, OSP, and the Multnomah Sheriff's Department on highway and arterial surveillance."

A tall, brunette, who filled out her uniform _very_ well Monroe noted, pointed towards the back of the room. "I have a map on the whiteboard and I'll be updating it as information comes in. You get anything on Capra's movements, bring it to me."

"Stolen car reports for the past twenty four hours up until we get Detective Burkhardt back come directly to me," Hank said. "We have to expect Capra will want new transportation." He shot Monroe a rueful look over the crowd. They both knew the odds that Capra could procure a car without a report being filed. "We know that Nick specifically was targeted. That this was planned. Capra might have set up a somewhat _less_ obvious car in advance. Questions?"

A few hands raised and after they were dealt with Renard stepped forward. "Capra is smart, charismatic, and a damn good conman, and he has a four hour head start. You all know your jobs. Let's get out there and get our man back."

The crowd began to dissipate, a dozen conversations springing up, and a tall, blonde, and handsome man in a suit that screamed Government Agent approached Renard and Hank. The suit was crisp despite the evening hour and his hair was thoroughly combed but his tie had purple polka dots, which Monroe was pretty sure wasn't standard Government Issue.

"Agent Rousse," Renard acknowledged.

"Captain." He was nearly as tall as Renard but he didn't carry it as well.

"Thank you for remaining secondary in this," Renard said gravely. "We appreciate the courtesy."

Rousse nodded. "Capra may be a federal fugitive but it's your officer and your city."

This was, Monroe realized, one of the FIB agents Nick had worked with on the cult case.

"You tell us what you need," Rousse continued, "and it's yours."

"Right now," Renard said, "I need any information you can get from the twenty-six people in our holding cells."

"Paulson and Baumgartner are headed back down now." Rousse gestured towards the huddle of feds at the back of the room with his cup. "Smith and I are diving back into Capra's financials. If there is anything _to_ find, we'll find it."

"So that was the head fed?" Monroe asked Hank as Rousse gathered up the other suits and departed. Nick had mentioned Rousse and the others during their infrequent phone calls and texts over the past week.

"That was him."

"Huh. I thought he'd be meaner or something."

Hank chuckled and shook his head. "They're good people. Capra is a federal fugitive. That gives us a lot more resources than we would normally have."

"That's good, right?" Juliette asked, standing and taking off her coat, displaying every intention to stay.

"That's very good." Hank's cell rang. "Excuse me."

Monroe eavesdropped shamelessly, but Juliette was doing the same thing so he didn't feel too bad. It quickly became apparent this wasn't the call that meant Nick was found.

Hank snapped the phone closed. "Highway checkpoints are all in place," he said. "A bit like closing the barn door after the horse is out but…." He shrugged. "We might get lucky."

"If the horse is even out," Renard said. "So far we haven't conclusively established that he's left the city."

"And even if he is stopped at a checkpoint, he'd be able to get past them," Monroe said and then realized that might sound suspicious to anyone nearby and added, "um…somehow, um, he might slip past."

Renard gave him a look that was annoyance instead of the confusion it really should have been were he truly as ignorant of the wesen world as he pretended to be. Hank just shook his head, but not in disagreement.

"What was that about a woman with Capra in the grocery store?" Juliette asked. "Was she involved?"

"We don't know," Hank said. "She entered and left the store with Capra but I'm more inclined to believe she was brought along as insurance against Nick's good behavior."

"I want to see the video," Juliette said.

Hank had that look on his face again, like he wanted to bundle Juliette safely off home surrounded by armed guards, but knew that saying that out loud would only lead to bad, bad things. Four ex-wives had apparently taught to keep his mouth shut somewhere along the line. He almost laughed when Hank looked at Renard. _Way to pass the buck, dude._

Renard paused for a whole heartbeat then nodded. "Set them up at Nick's desk."

Juliette nodded to him. "Thank you."

Nick's desk was dark and empty, cleaned off for the evening, the lamp switched off, the chair pushed in. Juliette rested her hands on the back of the chair for a moment before pulling it out to sit down. Her fingers fanned across the top, tracing an old scar in the wood.

Hank powered up the computer and pulled up a file. "There's not much to see," he warned. "Do you want to watch it all or just the part with Capra?"

Juliette took a deep breath. "Just the end, please."

Monroe rolled a chair over to sit next to her as Hank double-clicked something and the video started to play.

It was black and white and not particularly sharp and only lasted about a minute. Nick was recognizable, wheeling his cart through the produce section, chatting with the clerk over the eggplants. When Capra appeared the mysterious blond woman was next to him. Capra left her next to the bell peppers and radishes while he approached Nick who was, at that point, examining apples.

There was no sound but Nick's body language was enough for Monroe to realize that Capra was very lucky he'd thought to bring along a hostage. Nick and Capra spoke for a few moments then Capra gestured the woman over and all three left the store together. Capra had Nick's gun at that point and a hand wrapped around Nick's wrist.

"That's what I smelled," he realized, out loud.

Juliette and Hank both looked at him strangely.

"In the produce section. I smelled the ziegevolk pheromones on her and on Nick. He used the wolfsbane on himself but not on them." Monroe shook his head, angry at himself. "It smelled familiar but I didn't recognize it. Man, I should have _known_ that!"

Juliette put her hand on his arm. "It's not your fault, Monroe."

"You recognizing Capra," Hank said, "five minutes earlier wouldn't have made any difference."

"I suppose," he muttered. _Next_ time he'd know.

Hank closed the video and opened another one with a few minutes of Nick and Capra getting into Capra's fancy little convertible and driving away, leaving the woman standing on the sidewalk. Nick was stumbling a little and almost missed the step off the curb and Monroe wondered if it was the pheromone affecting him faster than the last time or if Capra had drugged him somewhere between the produce section and the parking lot.

"That's about it," Hank said. "Our mystery woman stands there for a couple hours and then wanders away. We're still trying to find out who she is and if she owns a vehicle Capra might have used as a getaway car."

"Two hours," Juliette murmured, "That poor woman."

"Being left behind is not the worst thing that could have happened to her," Hank said darkly.

Juliette had a worried look. "I just hope she's alright."

"I might be able to track her?" Monroe offered tentatively. It had been several hours, in the rain, with a hundred people having passed by, and he was no _schnüffler__-__blut_ but he might be able to get something.

"Hopefully it won't come to that," Hank said, "but I'll keep it in mind." He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, rolling his head a little.

Monroe winced at the resulting crack of joints and vertebra.

"Hey." Sergeant Wu appeared beside them so suddenly they all startled a little. "Feds found another one of Capra's accounts. And guess what?" He held a file out to Hank.

"Same as the others?" Hank asked. Flipping open the file he took a look.

"Four hundred and thirteen dollars and twenty-nine cents."

"What does that mean?" Juliette asked.

"It means that this guy is shit at saving money," Wu said helpfully.

"The FBI froze every account they've been able to find," Hank added, "but they haven't gotten much out of them. Turns out his personal accounts were empty and the cult bank accounts were about the same."

"Must have spent all his money on the house," Wu commented taking the file back from Hank.

The sarcasm was so thick Monroe he could have poked it with a claw if he'd been so inclined. He'd seen the pictures released to the press. Capra's home improvements had included hot tubs, antique furniture, imported marble floors, and armed security.

Hank spoke up, "Could be he has some stashed at another location but getting there is going to mean being out in public and last we knew he was still driving a _very_ memorable car."

Wu turned to Juliette. "We've got pictures of the car, Capra, and Nick all over the TV." He gave her shoulder a squeeze. "We'll find him, Jules."

"I know you will." She layered a hand over his.

Monroe's protective side didn't even twitch. Huh.

Wu tapped the file on the desk. "Anybody need anything before I hit the cold streets of Portland? _Again_. No. Alright then. Au revoir, boys and girls."

"Did he move the money?" Juliette asked. "He must have known he was being investigated after you and Nick talked to him about the murders in the park."

Hank shook his head. "The money going out all _went_ somewhere. Supplies, contractors, tailors, PR for the cult. This guy spent thousands on the house and himself."

Monroe felt the light bulb actually go on above his head. _Bing_.

"I'll be right back," Juliette was saying to Hank. "Bathroom break."

Monroe watched her head towards the back of the room torn between standing outside the door like a creepy stalker and taking advantage of the moment. "I need to talk to your boss. Right now. Alone would probably be best."

Hank looked at him like he'd just said he wanted paint his naked body with polka dots and dance a jitterbug in the middle of the street.

"It's important," Monroe told him.

"Come," Renard called and looked up as the door opened. He didn't frown but his right eyebrow twitched in what might have been surprise before he recovered and stood. "What can I do for you?"

Monroe took a deep breath and closed the door, ignoring the screaming instincts that said he was nuts for blocking his only exit with a big, fucking predator in the room. He kept one hand on the knob. "Sorry to bother you." Really, really unfortunately sorry.

Renard leaned back in his chair, casually at ease. "No bother. I was actually hoping to speak with you before you left."

Well, _that_ was unsettling.

"I wanted to thank you for assisting Detectives Burkhardt and Griffin with their cases recently. They've mentioned several times how helpful you have been."

"Oh, uh, goody."

Renard smiled at him. With all those perfect, white teeth.

"So, anyway, uh, Hank, I mean Detective Griffin, and I were talking about why Nick may have been taken and there was an, um, mention of Capra's lack of funds."

"Yes." Renard leaned forward, elbows resting on his desk top. Listening.

Monroe took that as encouragement and dove right in. "We know Capra was planning this. He used wolfsbane which means he knew about me which means he's been following Nick. Or more likely having Nick followed. Capra doesn't strike me as the type to do the dirty work himself."

"Wolfsbane?" Renard questioned blandly.

Monroe forced his hand off the doorknob and took a step towards the desk. "Look whatever your reasons for not coming out to Nick are your own. I won't pretend to understand why you let him think he was going _insane_ rather than help him, but that's between you and Nick and something you can take up with him when we get him back. Right now I'm just worried about _getting_ him back."

Renard was silent for a long, long moment, eyes flat.

"Or perhaps I misspoke," Monroe said, easing back towards the door.

Renard's chair creaked as he sat back. "You think Capra plans to sell him."

"I think," he said carefully, "if it was about revenge we would have found the body already."

Renard nodded. "The best price will come from one of the Families, which will mean getting Nick out of the country. Capra might have the connections to do that but the FBI moved up their schedule which made _him_ move up _his_ schedule. Despite Capra's…talents I doubt even he could secure that sort of favor overnight."

"I know a few people I can check with," Monroe offered carefully, "but I'm sure you _do_ have the kind of connections it would take to find out if anyone overseas was looking to purchase a Grimm."

Those pale eyes crawled over him, considering.

Monroe refused to shuffle his feet or wish he'd reassessed his choice of sweaters that morning.

"I'll look into it," Renard said at last.

Monroe _may_ have let out a tiny, tiny, hardly noticeable sigh. "I have some savings," he offered. "It won't be enough to buy a Grimm but it might be enough to make it _look_ like I have enough." Enough to get a meeting if it came to that.

"Money won't be a problem." Renard stood; a big, sleek predator rising from his throne.

"Oh. Okay then. I didn't want to presume." Monroe took a casual step backwards as the man came around the desk. "Thank you." He grabbed the door knob behind his back, more than ready to escape.

Renard sat on the edge of his desk, face thrown into shadows by the light from the lamp behind him. "I promised his aunt," he said abruptly.

Monroe stopped, doorknob half turned.

"When Nick's parents died, Marie Kessler came to me with a deal. She stayed out of my territory and in return I protected Nick and did not interfere. _Would_ not interfere. Unless Nick specifically _asked_ me for help. She made a good offer and Nick…." He hesitated, one hand coming up to grip the edge of the desk. "Nick was very young. I saw no reason _not_ to extend my protection." He paused then added, "Even though she demanded a blood oath."

Holy crap. They had been trying to find out how to get Nick to a meeting with the local Royal and he'd been sitting right here the whole time. "Oh, wow, I had no idea." Belatedly he made a quick duck of his head in obeisance, striving not to look too foolish.

Monroe's awed amazement of Marie Kessler jumped five notches higher. Blood oaths were serious things. She had walked up to _this_ man and demanded the equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath, only…much, much bigger. "You understand," Monroe said, "that I have to tell Nick about this."

Renard inclined his head. "All he ever had to do was ask."

Monroe nodded in growing realization. "But Nick is….kind of….well…." He didn't want to sound negative but Nick was—

The corner of Renard's mouth tilted up. "Stubbornly independent is the phrase you're looking for I believe."

"Exactly."

There was a knock on the door then Hank stuck his head in, eyes darting back and forth between the two of them. "They found Capra's car. Abandoned."

TBC


	9. Chapter 9

_**Notes:**_

To **gail19** who said :I've never thought of Renard as evil, just absolutely bound and determined to control everything around him. Sort of as a conditioned response to his childhood.

So true. I definitely see Renard as having a strict, controlled childhood and now that he's grown up _he_ strives to be the one in control at all times. Adalind (so totally evil and still I feel sorry for her) knew precisely where to aim her curse to hurt him the worst.

_**Warnings:**_ Short chapter warning, mentions imprisonment using drugs, language, and all those other things.

() () ()

"Nick?" Renard and Monroe asked together. The second it was out of his mouth Monroe realized that if Nick had been found that would have been the first thing Hank said and he knew Renard knew that too.

Hank shook his head and blew out a breath. "No sign of him but they're searching the surrounding buildings."

They followed Hank as he headed back to his desk. "Where?" Renard asked.

"On Columbia. Just off the river."

Renard frowned. "That's practically Washington."

Hank snagged his jacket off the back of his chair and shrugged it on as he turned, coming face to face with Juliette. He gave her a pleading look. "Don't ask me to let you go down there."

"I'd be in the way," Juliette agreed though clearly she didn't want to. "But I want you to take Monroe. He can help."

Hank paused, looking from Juliette to Monroe to Juliette, dark eyes worried. "Alright. But," he pointed sternly at Monroe, "if I tell you to stay in the car, you _stay_ in the car."

"Once. I got out of the car _once_." Twice, but Hank didn't know about the second time that night of the stakeout. Probably. He snatched up his own coat.

Juliette grabbed Monroe's sleeve. "Call me the minute you know _anything_."

"Of course." Monroe hurried after Hank. She was still watching him when he glanced back, the lamplight from Nick's desk the fear and worry on her face.

"Okay," Hank demanded as soon as they were in the car. "What was that between you and the Captain?"

"I may know why Capra took Nick."

"Why?" Hank flipped on the lights and sirens and left twin tire marks across the yellow parking lines.

"Remember when I told you everything had a price?" He yanked the seatbelt tighter as they took a corner very sharply and braced a hand on the door to keep from falling into the window. Hank shot him an alarmed look which Monroe returned because Hank was looking at him and not the— "Road! Eyes on the road!"

"You're saying he took Nick to _sell_ him?"

"Capra's practically penniless," Monroe pointed out, "and a Grimm would be worth an _unimaginable_ amount of money to the right people. He's probably been planning this since the day you and Nick interviewed him about the murders in the park."

"Which is why," Hank said, "he didn't take off as soon as he realized the investigation was back on."

It all made a horrifying kind of sense when he looked at it like that. "He must have realized Nick was a Grimm when he didn't react correctly to the pheromone. He probably woged to find out if Nick really was a Grimm."

"Isn't that a little risky?"

"With a regular Grimm? Hell yeah." Monroe shook his head at the _ziegevolk's_ daring. "But the Portland Grimm has a rep. He makes friends with _eisbiber_ and arrests _gekautvicious_ instead of cutting out their hearts."

Hank folded his lips together into a line. "And the FBI originally got onto Capra because they believed he was involved with human trafficking." Hank slammed a hand against the steering wheel. "Shit! What kind of people would have the money for that?"

"In this case? The best price will probably come from overseas. And we're talking prices that you could retire on. Or, well, that Capra could retire on."

Hank grunted. "I'll bet Capra's idea of what constitutes a retirement fund is a whole lot different than mine."

"Amen to that."

"If he's done this before he'll have the contacts lined up." Hank paused while he negotiated a red light. "But we jumped his schedule. It takes time arrange that kind of transportation. There are only so many ways to get a _living_ captive overseas in a condition that will guarantee good condition."

"Capra might not have the money to back up his promises but he can be…persuasive."

A muscle in Hank's jaw twitched and he pressed the gas pedal a little farther to the floor. "Agent Rousse suspected someone inside the department was tipping Capra off. They let word leak out that they were planning the raid next week then did it early but Capra still had time to pack a bag and get off the property before we got there."

"Do you have any idea who?"

"No," he admitted with a glare for a minivan that nosed past a stop sign like it was considering pulling out in front of them. "That's part of what the Feds are looking into."

Hank turned into a fenced yard with a tan, metal warehouse that had a For Rent sign stuck on the front and a faded letters that said DPI Wholesales. Wu met them at the gate trailed by the palest man Monroe had ever seen. "Meet Rennie Madison."

His skin was pale, his eyes were pale, his hair was pale, even his voice was pale when he murmured, "Hello." His dirty blue coveralls were startling against all the…paleness.

"Mr. Madison is the security guard slash maintenance man of this fair establishment. Capra paid him two hundred dollars to let him store a car here for a month starting two weeks ago."

Madison nodded, pale hair swaying.

"A little after four o'clock today Mr. Madison saw Capra drive up in a—and I'm quoting here—'humdinger of a car'."

"Fancy little thing," Madison commented blandly.

Wu pressed his lips together hard, holding back what was undoubtedly a terribly inappropriate comment. It must have been bad because Monroe had heard _stories_ and he couldn't imagine what Wu _wouldn't_ say. "About half an hour later Capra left in the car he had in storage. A beige, four-door sedan with Oregon plates. Mr. Madison didn't think anything of it until he saw the news."

"Was Capra alone?" Hank asked Madison.

"Nossir."

"Someone was with him?"

"Yessir."

Monroe could actually hear Hank's teeth grind.

Hank took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Can you describe him?"

"Yessir. The other guy from the news was with him. The cop."

"You recognized him?"

"Yessir. From the picture. Thought he was sleeping until I saw the news."

Hank's whole body went stiff. "Sleeping?"

"Yessir. Mr. Capra had a real hard time waking him up to change cars."

Lips pressed together, Hank took a moment to write in his notebook. Monroe thought he probably wasn't writing anything at all but rather using the moment to calm down. He wished he had a notebook to write in too.

"And he paid to store the car here for a month?" Hank asked.

"Yessir."

"Did he leave anything else here? Luggage, boxes…."

"Nossir."

"Which way did he go when he left?"

Madison pointed left. The interstate was in that direction. Monroe knew that because he and Hank had used it to get here.

Wu shuffled Madison towards the unformed cop standing nearby. "Officer Harvick will take your statement." He waited until Harvick had moved Madison to the side. "He couldn't remember all of the license plate and—surprise, surprise—the security cameras haven't worked for almost a year. But we have the first letter and the last digit so we can at least narrow it down. I'll go call it in"

"Come on," Hank told Monroe. "Let's check out the car."

At the back of the warehouse was an outbuilding just big enough for two cars. The sliding doubled doors were wide open and guarded by a uniformed officer. Farther off Monroe could see more blue uniforms moving in and out of the surrounding buildings.

"Nick was here alright," Monroe said as soon as he got inside.

Hank pulled a pair of latex gloves out of his pocket. "Put these on. You can smell him?" he asked quietly with a glance toward the door. "Are you certain he was _here_? It's not leftover from him being in the car?"

Monroe yanked the gloves on with a snap. "Definitely."

Hank opened the trunk and started poking around. He came up with a lavender and white knitted scarf. "That is not Nick's," he said, putting it back where he'd gotten it.

Monroe came closer. "It's not Capra's either. Floral perfume."

"The blonde from the grocery store maybe?" He moved around to the passenger side of the car and opened the door. "She was wearing a lavender coat." He straightened, holding up an open wallet. "It's Nick's. Credit cards are all there but the cash is gone." He flipped over the middle compartment. "Juliette's picture is missing. He always kept it in this pocket."

"Well that's creepy." The air wafting out the open door of Capra's roadster was thick with the mustiness of wolfsbane and _ziegevolk_ and smothering beneath that was Nick's cleaner scent.

Hank shot him a deeply meaningful look and dug out his cell phone. "Can you confirm he put Nick in the other car?" he asked while dialing. Hank was a multi-tasker like that.

"Uh, yeah, give me a second." He sniffed around. Capra's new car hadn't been taken care of. Coolant had leaked into two small incandescent green puddles filling the shed with a metallic chemical tang. He tracked Nick's scent from one car to the resting place of the other then followed it out the door.

Hank trailed after him, phone pressed to his ear. "Yes, sir, just as a precaution. Yes, I understand how unhappy with you she will be. Thank you, sir." He hung up just as Monroe reached the front gate. "They have an APB out on the new vehicle and Wu is redirecting the searchers to begin bringing in any video footage they can find on the surrounding streets. Maybe we'll get lucky and get a picture of it. And the Captain is going to make sure someone accompanies Juliette if she steps foot outside the squad room."

"That's good," Monroe said distractedly, focusing on the elusive scents. By the time he reached the gate Nick's scent had almost faded out, blurred by exhaust and transmission fluid and the dozens of vehicles that had passed by in the intervening hours. He was able to track the car a dozen yards west down the street, mostly by the stench of leaking coolant, before it grew faint enough he had to halfway shift.

Doubling back, he checked the east side of the road just in case but, no, no, they'd definitely gone west. "That way," he told Hank. "I'm going to see if I can track it any further."

"I'll get the car."

Monroe started down the sidewalk, staying half woged as he hurried along under winter-bared trees and a flat gray sky. He was tempted to go full on wolf but the last time that had happened in the city there had been a nasty altercation with the city dog catcher. No need to repeat _that_ unless it was absolutely necessary.

Hank caught up with him a few miles down the road, standing at an intersection. Rolling down the window he leaned an arm on the door and whistled. "Man, I knew you could move fast but that was impressive. You still got the trail?"

"Yes. But it's waning." He crossed the street and walked a little farther but by then he could barely find Nick's scent at all. The wind kicked up, cold and reeking of fish and river water.

Hank got out of the car, leaning on the open door. "I think we know where he was headed anyway."

With a sinking heart, Monroe followed his gaze to the long arc of the I-5.

TBC


	10. Chapter 10

_**Notes:**_ Whew, finally some action. Er, soon.

_**Warnings:**_ Aaaaaannnnnngggggssssstttttt ! Hank's bad habits and worse jokes. And all that other all that other stuff.

() () ()

Countless movies and television shows had told Monroe that the first forty-eight hours after a kidnapping were the most critical and that the chances of finding the victim plunged dramatically every day that followed.

On day two Monroe dropped Juliette off at work before stopping at the station. "Someone has to pay the bills," she'd said, jokingly Monroe knew because she'd already mentioned she was on salary. Her smile faded quickly. "And I'll go crazy sitting there with nothing to do. Besides I have many spies to give me updates, right?" She poked him in the arm a couple times.

"Every hour," Monroe swore, fingers lifted in the Boy Scout pledge.

There were plain clothes officers watching her house and another pair stationed outside her office. Monroe had eavesdropped in shameless appreciation as Renard had taken the four aside and explained _exactly_ how disappointed he would be if anything happened to Juliette on their watch. Answer: _very_.

Officer Raiser at the front desk stopped him for a few minutes of chatter about the cookbook he was putting together as a fundraiser for the local children's home. By the time Raiser had to break away to give directions to a tourist, Monroe had somehow agreed to contribute his grandmother's holiday Apfelkuchen mit Guss for the desert section.

This morning there was a sense of determination and optimism to the room. Phones were busy, people were moving with purpose.

Hank waved him over to his desk where the speaker on his landline was churning out tinny hold music. "Remember the coolant leak in Capra's getaway car?"

"How could I forget," Monroe said. "I'm _still_ smelling it."

Hank grinned but it was weary and strained. "We got a hit on Capra's AAA card."

"He broke down," Monroe laughed incredulously. Instantly he felt bad for laughing but it was funny imaging that futzy, little man standing over a steaming engine on an empty, dark winter highway. Of course he'd called his automotive club for rescue.

"Can anyone say Godsmack?" Wu muttered darkly on his way past the desk.

"Unfortunately it happened after their office staff went home so the paperwork didn't go through until this morning," Hank added sourly. "But it slowed him down by a couple hours and gave us a concrete direction."

Monroe looked at the map on Hank's desk. It was partially folded to show the western half of Oregon and Washington. A circle was drawn in red on the I-5 just outside of Chehalis. Monroe recalled passing through once on his way up-country for a thing a couple years ago. It was a good sized town, a nice town, not the kind of place you would imagine illicit meetings in the middle of the night.

"I'm on the hold with the Lewis County Sheriff's Department," Hank continued. "They going to put the tow truck driver on the phone and we'll see if he knows anything."

Monroe gathered from Hank's tone and expression that he didn't think it was likely. "Did you go home last night?"

"Nah. I caught some sleep in the back—" He grabbed for the phone as the hold music turned into a voice. "Yeah, I'm here."

Sitting in Nick's chair felt weird, but he sat and listened to the phone call with a new appreciation for technology that was letting them talk to a man in another county. The tow truck driver didn't have much information. Capra had been annoyed but not nervous or worried. He hadn't spoken much, ignoring most of the other man's attempts at small talk. "Worried about keeping his schedule, I guess."

"Did you see anyone with him?"

"No, he was alone as far as I could tell."

Monroe exchanged worried looks with Hank. That did _not_ bode well.

Hank asked a few more questions, thanked the man, and hung up the phone. Leaning back in his chair he scrubbed both hands over his face and up over his short cropped hair. "Fuck." He shoved his chair back. "I need some air."

It wasn't exactly an invitation but Monroe followed him down the hall and out the back door. Hank stopped to talk to a guy leaning against the low wall and came away with a cigarette. Monroe took up a position upwind while the other guy offered a lighter then took himself back into the building with several understand looks in Hank's direction which Hank tacitly ignored.

"I, uh, didn't know you smoked," Monroe said when half the cigarette was gone.

"Quit nine years ago," Hanks said shortly.

They stood quietly for another minute. Monroe was never very good with quiet. "Did you know that originally tobacco was thought to cure everything from syphilis to cancer? Doctors used to actually prescribe it."

Hank looked at him, brows drawn down into a V of confusion.

"Sorry, I tend to ramble. Sometimes."

Hank shook his head but he was almost smiling.

Monroe leaned against the wall next to him, tucking his hands into his pockets. They were in a small, partially sunken courtyard surrounded by a waist high wall and leafless shrubbery. It wasn't a particularly nice morning but the sun was doing its best and they were mostly shielded from the wind. It wasn't warm but it wasn't as cold as it could have been which was good, Hank hadn't even paused long enough to grab his jacket.

Hank stubbed out the cigarette and matched Monroe's pose, hands shoved deep into his pockets. After a couple more minutes he took a deep breath and let it out slow. "First thing, we need to establish that Capra didn't…drop Nick off somewhere between here and Chehalis."

Monroe was relieved he hadn't said _dump the body_. "Will you be able to find that out?"

"If he met a contact on the interstate in the middle of the night we're fucked," Hank said bluntly. "But there are homes and businesses along the way. We'll get people out there to check them." Pushing off the wall he headed for the door, glancing back when he reached it. "You coming?"

Monroe blinked. Apparently they were done getting air.

() () ()

Monroe went home and worked for a few hours, arriving back at the station a little after eight that evening. At nine pm Renard banished Hank until he'd had at least four hours sleep so he offered to drive the other man home because he looked on the verge of passing out. Hank turned him down, resting his hands on the sink as he looked at Monroe in the bathroom mirror. "I'm going to grab a cot here." He straightened up with a wince and grabbed a handful of paper towels, water dripping from his face. "Do me a favor and see if you can get Juliette to go home."

Juliette had given up trying to work a little after two in the afternoon and gotten her watcher to drive her to the station where she'd camped out at Nick's desk and talked Renard into letting her make some of the less important but still necessary phone calls to keep herself busy.

Monroe took a deep breath. "I'll try, man, but…." He tried to mime his possible inability to budge her stubbornness.

"Do what you can. It won't do her any good staying here all night."

"I could say the same for you," Monroe shot back.

Hank didn't disagree. He also didn't change his mind.

Monroe headed back to the main room, pausing in the doorway. Juliette was slumped in Nick's chair, arms folded on top of his desk calendar, chin resting on her wrists as she gazed at something on Nick's computer.

The place was nearly empty; everyone was either out following up leads or had crashed for a few hours of desperately needed sleep. Renard emerged from his office, spotted him, and waved him over.

Monroe headed that way. "Anything?" It was a bit of a novelty to stand next to someone he had to look _up_ to, even if it was only a couple inches.

"Rumors," Renard said. He looked as tired as everyone else, but his eyes were still sharp and bright, his tie impeccably knotted. "Word is spreading that an American Grimm may be for sale but no one knows anything specific."

Monroe's shoulders sagged. It wasn't an unexpected answer but he'd been hopeful.

"I've put it out that there might be interested parties right here in Oregon." Renard led the way over to the coffee station. He filled a paper cup with hot water and rifled through a box of tea bags until he found one he liked. "Interested parties with deep pockets."

That was a really good plan actually. The wesen grapevine could be fast as a _schnelle zunge__when_. Capra might decide that it was easier to sell local.

"Keeping a man captive _and_ in good shape on a long sea voyage is…difficult," Renard said quietly unknowingly echoing Hank's earlier comment. "An aircraft would be the best choice. Between PPD personnel and my personal staff, Capra will find it difficult to secure a charter with transoceanic capabilities." The smile that twisted his lips was predatory enough Monroe had to fight not to woge right there.

"He may have something arranged," he felt compelled to point out. The FBI's raid had interrupted Capra's plans but setting up the buyer and exit strategy was probably the first thing he did.

"Most likely." Adding a little milk to the tea Renard took a sip.

Monroe made a face. A tea bag. A paper cup. Gah.

Renard shrugged ruefully. "You get used to it."

No, you really didn't.

Giving him an amused look, Renard continued. "I am having the most likely buyers watched. If they attempt to meet Capra anywhere in the Northwest I _will_ know about it."

"Hey, I believe you." He felt a little better knowing Renard had turned his not inconsiderable power to retrieving their lost Grimm.

"If you're leaving for the night, try to get Juliette to go with you," Renard said added a kinder tone. "There's nothing more she can do here except worry and she might as well do that at home surrounded by familiar things."

Monroe nodded seriously. "I'll try to convince her." He headed that direction again and when he got closer he realized Juliette wasn't looking at the computer but at a small strip of pictures stuck back behind the monitor, barely noticeable. It was one of those photo booth things with four small black and white images on a strip.

"This was our ninth date," Juliette said as he came to a stop beside the desk. She didn't lift her head from her arms. "It was almost Christmas and we went to a movie at the mall and then we wandered around for a couple hours making fun of the clothes and looking at the displays."

Monroe sat down on the corner of the desk.

"You know that thing he does where he looks at a person and he can tell you all sorts of things about them."

"Ooooh yeah." He'd been on the receiving end of that a few times.

"He was really shy about it when I first met him. He was still in Patrol back then and I think they gave him crap about it." She smiled faintly at the memory and wiggled her chin into a more comfortable position. "I think he did it by accident the first time and he tried so hard to pretend it was just a lucky guess. But I thought it was neat and once he figured that out he would do it sometimes to impress me. We sat in that mall for an hour after the movie was over just people-watching before I pulled him into the photo booth."

Monroe looked at the pictures again. Nick was making a goofy face in the first one. Juliette was doing bunny ears over Nick's head in the second. Both of them were laughing too hard to smile properly in the third. In the fourth Nick had her dipped back over his arm as much as was possible in the tiny space and was kissing her, with his hand up to half block the camera like it was an intrusive paparazzi photographer.

"It's a nice picture," he offered.

She tilted her head up to look at him with a sweet smile. "Did you tell Hank that you talked to Bud?"

"Oh, no I completely forgot." Grabbing a Post-It off the stack, he found a pen in the middle drawer of Hank's desk. "I'd better warn him that the Lodge is now informed. I feel like that should have a capital letter. _Informed_. Half the town will know by morning."

He got as far as the name when the pen sputtered and died. "Damn." It seemed to be the only pen Hank had in his whole desk, but he did find a half empty package of spearmint, sugarless gum and a rubber band ball about the size of his fist. "Is there perchance a pen over there?"

"Oh, I think I can find one." Juliette pulled open a drawer, plunged her hand in, and drew out a handful of pens, pencils, and markers so big she could barely get her fingers all the way around. "Any preferences?"

Monroe snorted a laugh. "Have you noticed that your fiancé seems to have…? How do I put this delicately? _Severe_ writing utensil hording tendencies?"

Juliette chuckled. "And coats. That man has more coats than I do shoes." She smiled fondly, putting away the handful of writing implements once Monroe had chosen one. "He uses three-quarters of the downstairs closet."

"Now that you mention it," Monroe said with dawning realization, "yes! Every time I see him he has a different coat on." They shared a much needed chuckle. "I like hanging out with you," Monroe confided. "I'm going to have so much ammunition when Nick—um, well, when he gets back. Because of course he's going to be back."

Juliette pressed her lips together and nodded firmly. "Of course he is."

Monroe nodded and finished his note. "I could drive you home now, if you want."

She smiled. "Hank?"

"Yeah," he admitted on a gusty sigh. "And Renard."

"Three against one." She stood and gathered her coat. "Just as well. I think the PPWA woman is either going to knit me a sweater or bring me a bottle of whiskey."

"PPWA?" Monroe fingered his keys, anxious to go. All this sitting around had made him antsy. He anticipated another run in the park to settle him enough to sleep. There had been a lot of runs in the park lately.

"Portland Police Wives Association." She hooked her purse over her arm. "They're a support group of sorts. Emotional, financial, whatever's needed. I'm not a wife." She spun the ring on her finger. "Not yet. But they help out girlfriends and fiancés too."

This, this right here, was _definitely_ a hugging moment. He was, he thought, getting better at recognizing them.

() () ()

On day three the mood of the precinct had noticeably declined. Juliette caught a ride to work with one of her night time protection detail before he went off duty so Monroe arrived earlier than usual. Marvin at the front desk waved him in with hardly a word and a sympathetic look.

The squad room was somber, quiet. Even the ringing phones and clicking keyboards seemed muted.

There was no sign of Hank but his computer was lit up and his coat was on the back of his chair so it was a good bet he hadn't gone far. Monroe parked a basket of victuals on Nick's desk (it helped fill up some of the gapingly empty space) and wandered over to look at the rolling whiteboard that had been parked against the wall near Hanks' side. On one side of the board was a blow up of Capra, smiling and smarmy in his starched blue shirt and natty vest and striped power tie.

Beside that were thirty-eight pictures of Capra's victims. Twenty-six from the cult, the rest from previous cases. Lorena Mas the _lausenschlange_ was there, pretty and blue-eyed and delicate.

There were several new faces, added since the FBI raid had hit the news and the internet, from states as far away as Wisconsin and the newest one that hadn't been there yesterday from Maine. Monroe squinted at the color reprint of a UMaine ID showing a pretty young woman with red hair and freckles.

"2003," Sergeant Wu commented, coming to a stop beside him. "Apparently Capra started his crime spree back east before gracing _us_ with his presence."

"Lucky us."

Wu made a grimace of agreement. "Hank's in the locker room taking a shower. Should be back in a few minutes. Are those raspberry scones?"

"Homemade." Unable to sleep, he'd finished three commissions and four watches from the jewelry store, emptying his work box for the week and done a couple laps around Nick's house just to make sure. At five am he'd moved on to baking and made enough scones and muffins (those frozen bananas were coming in handy) to feed the whole morning shift. He hadn't brought enough coffee for the whole station though so the thermos was tucked away underneath Nick's desk. "Help yourself."

"Awesome." Wu picked out a scone. And a muffin. And another scone. "For my partner. She loves scones," he said. "You can be my consultant anytime, Monroe."

Hank came down the hall, smelling of fresh clothes and soap and toothpaste.

Monroe didn't have to ask if he'd spent the night but he did it anyway, expressing his displeasure with the obvious exhaustion that a change of clothes and a shave wasn't going to cover up. "Did you stay here all night?" He wasn't doing Nick any favors running himself into the ground.

Hank gave him a weary look and deigned not to answer.

"That's what I thought." He pushed the basket in Hank's direction and reached for the thermos. "Have something to eat at least since, undoubtedly, you haven't done that either."

Hank didn't argue which was confession enough and reached eagerly for the mug Monroe handed him. After a few sips he slumped into his desk chair with a sigh. "Morning," he greeted and raised the cup for another drink.

"Good morning." He placed a scone on a napkin and pushed it Hank's way.

Hank rolled his eyes but pulled the pastry closer. "I already have a mother, Monroe."

"You wouldn't need mothering if you took care of yourself," Monroe pointed out. "I'm not going to let you wither away. Nick would kill me when he got back."

"Wither, huh." Hank took a bite and pushed a few buttons on his keyboard. He reached for the pile of pink message slips sitting on the edge of his desk and hid a yawn. "Have you checked with Renard this morning? Has he heard anything?"

Monroe had finally been forced to tell Hank something. He'd thought Nick had the implacable stare down pat but the Grimm was a rank amateur compared to Hank's relentless gaze. "Not yet. I think he just got in." Renard's office had several people in it besides the Captain and the door was closed.

"Handover briefing with the night shift OIC." Hank glanced at his watch. "I guess it is only six am. I thought I'd slept longer." He spent a few minutes thumbing through his messages, sipping his coffee and picking at the scone with his free hand.

Monroe poured his own mug full for his first coffee of the morning. Mmmmmm…. It wasn't the taste so much. Like canines (and he would deny the comparison with his dying breath) _blutbad_ actually had fewer taste buds than the average human or wesen but their sense of smell was far, far stronger. Consequently he _liked_ things that smelled good and, though others would mock, organic free-trade coffee smelled soooo good.

"The FBI got a lead off Capra's financials," Hank said, reading off a message slip. "Place up in Washington. Apparently Capra visited a restaurant just off the highway about once every three months for the past two years. He'd stop there on Friday evenings and again on Monday mornings."

"Sounds like a long weekend," Monroe commented. "Yet another woman?"

"Maybe." Hank hummed to himself and set the message on the top of his keyboard. "It came in pretty late last night. Rousse put a call into the Snohomish County Sheriff's Department but hadn't heard back yet. Let me check my email and see if anything has come in."

Monroe idly spun Nick's chair in a half circle. Renard's door was open, people filing out, and Renard was on the phone. Spinning the chair back to face Hank he asked, "Can I use Nick's computer? I want to see if anything has come back on the," he waved his fingers like tentacles, "tendrils I put out." As much as he hated asking _eisbiber_ for anything they had an information network that could rival the _mellifers_.

"Sure. Don't look at the files and don't go to restricted sites."

Monroe pushed the power button. "Not even to surf porn?" he asked innocently.

"Not even doggy porn," Hank replied without hesitation.

"Ohhhhh, that's just wrong, man."

Hank grinned. "I don't judge."

"Griffin!" Renard appeared in his office door.

"Sir."

"We've got something." He headed back towards his desk, leaving the door open.

In the abrupt silence that gripped the room, Hank's chair creaked loudly as he got up and hurried for Renard's office. Monroe followed. Renard gave him and odd look when he trailed Hank in but didn't tell him to leave.

"Sheriff's department in Snohomish County called in a match on our APB for Capra. He was seen at a local mechanic in the town of Sultan, Washington yesterday afternoon. Someone identified him from the picture on the news."

"Sultan," Hank said. "That's just up the road from where we got the hit we got on Capra's credit card."

"It's a four hour drive," Renard said. "Which is why I've authorized air support to fly you up there. The pilot will meet you at the airport. Agent Rousse is requesting an FBI SWAT team from Seattle. They may beat you there." Renard handed Hank a folded sheaf of papers. "Go get him back."

Hank nodded firmly. "We will." He headed out the door, clapping Monroe on the arm as he went by. "Hope you don't get airsick, Monroe."

He glanced back at Renard as he left the office but the Captain didn't protest Hank inviting him along only nodded once, solemnly. Monroe nodded back and got the hell out of there. He thought he'd just gotten Renard's blessing.

TBC


	11. Chapter 11

_**Notes:**_ I've never been to Sultan, WA but the pictures sure look nice. I'm sure there are mistakes. Everything I know I learned from Google. Which just reinforces what I've always suspected, Google is creepy.

_**Warnings:**_ Same ol', same ol'. Language, evil cliffhangers, Monroe's heldover Christmas sweaters which, I dunno, do they need a warning of their own?

() () ()

Air support it turned out was a euphemism for a tiny white and yellow thing that looked like it should have been flying supplies into some remote Alaskan outpost. "Um, I'm all for getting there as quickly as possible but I don't think we're going to fit in that." He'd been in planes before. Large passenger planes with plenty of head room and bathrooms and head room. Did he mention head room?

"Of course we'll fit," Hank said but he looked dubious to Monroe's eye.

They met their pilot, a compact man who was closer to Nick's height than either of theirs, clean-shaven, blue-eyed, and reassuringly middle aged. He promised they would indeed fit. And so would their gear, which consisted of a heavy, military style duffle Hank had heaved out of his car trunk. It clanked every time he moved it and Monroe was getting the heavy scent of gun oil off it.

"Cessna 172 Skyhawk." He gave the blue and white paint job a loving pat. "Still one of the most sought after aircraft for training because of their reliability."

Monroe's brain coughed up an interesting fact. "The world's longest continuous airplane flight occurred in a Cessna 172. Almost sixty-five straight days."

The pilot gave him a pleased look. "They still have the plane hanging in the McCarran Airport down in Vegas."

"I saw it once when I was passing through," Monroe explained.

Hank made a strangled noise. "_You_ went to Vegas." He looked Monroe up and down.

"What?" Monroe gazed down at the plaid flannel jacket and the seasonal sweater he was holding out on putting away on the excuse that it was still technically winter. "I went to a conference." And cleaned up at a backroom game of Texas Holdem but he wasn't going to bring that up. There were advantages to being able to hear the other player's heartbeats and smell their anxiety. Also, it turned out four out of five horologists were bad at poker.

"Heard about your partner," the pilot said as they strapped in. "That's tough."

"We're going to get him back," Hank stated.

The man nodded. "Damn right." He spent some time flipping switches and talking into his headset in secret pilot code then glanced back at Monroe who had been relegated to the back seat. "You set back there, detective?"

No. Hell no. He was going to die in this tiny, tiny airplane because he hadn't eaten the Grimm when he'd had the chance and now his life had turned into one of those overblown murder mystery shows where someone died every week and you started to wonder why there wasn't some kind of government warning on the Welcome sign at the city limits. Or at least a listing of the per capita murder rate.

Not that he watched those types of things except those three times when he couldn't sleep and it was either that or that infomercial with George Forman telling him how delicious and healthy meat could be. _Not_ really a big help on long nights when he was reconsidering his lifestyle choices for the hundredth time.

On the bright side if he died in a flaming ball of wreckage he wouldn't have to see Juliette's face if they came back without Nick.

Wrestling on the headset he'd been given he said, "I'm not a detective."

"Monroe is a consultant with the department," Hank explained over his own headset.

They were taxying, lining up with the long stretch of pavement that Monroe had only ever seen out the side window of a commercial jet prior to this. "Oh yeah, what kind of consultant?" And then they were shooting down the runway and should the man their _lives_ depended on _really_ be making small talk at this moment?

Hank glanced over his shoulder at Monroe. "He's, um, hostage negotiations."

Monroe was too busy gripping the sides of his seat to do more than shoot him a glare. Hank smirked and turned back to the pilot. "Where are we landing?"

"There's an airport in Sultan. It isn't a _big_ airport per se but this sweet lady can handle it."

"Have you ever been there?" he asked the pilot. It had been years since he'd had been this far up in Washington. He couldn't recall ever having been to a town named Sultan.

"Once." He looked out at the blue sky and sighed reminiscently. "Woman I dated came from up there. They throw a heck of a party in the summer."

The town turned out to be much bigger than Monroe had expected. The airport was much, much _smaller_. "Is that grass? Their runway is _grass_?"

The pilot tipped his sunglasses down and looked over them at the small, _grass_ rectangle lined—literally _lined_—on all four sides by towering pine trees (Monroe had the hysterical thought that this is what would happen if Paul Bunyan took a long swipe with his giant axe). Pushing the glasses back up he nodded, "Yep, that's grass alright." More seriously he added, "Relax this model is _made_ for this."

The only thing that kept Monroe from freaking out right there was that their pilot didn't have a whiff of fear to him. Hank did though, which made Monroe vindictively happy in a way that was probably bad news for his karma. _Hostage negotiator my ass._

"How fast can you be refueled and back in the air?" Hank asked the pilot as he pulled out the baggage.

Monroe wandered a few feet away enjoying the chill, pine-scented air and being alive.

"Depends on how strong their pump is." He hauled Hank's bag out. "You want me to head back up."

"I want you over that house," Hank told him. He hitched the duffle bag over his shoulder.

The pilot grinned. "Send me the coordinates."

A Snohomish County Sheriff's Department vehicle was parked at the end of the taxiway, brown clad deputy leaning casually against the door. He stubbed out a cigarette as they approached and swung around to open the back of the SUV. "You must be Detectives Griffin and Monroe," he said, holding out a hand. "Deputy Mitchim but you can call me Mitch."

"Hank," Hank offered as Monroe said, "Just Monroe. Not a detective."

"Monroe's a consultant with the department," Hank explained, "and a friend of Detective Burkhardt."

Mitchim gave Monroe a second look. "Oh yeah, what kind of consultant?" He was a big man who'd lost most of his hair in his forty-plus years and shaved off the rest. Tall and broad in the shoulders, but he moved like he could handle himself.

Hank gave Monroe a truly devilish smirk before turning back to Mitchim. "He's the department psychic."

Monroe glared at the back of Hank's head. When Hank turned to put his duffle into the truck he glared harder and mouthed _psychic!_

Hank shrugged and walked around to get into the front passenger seat. "What? It's a good story."

"I think I liked hostage negotiator better," Monroe muttered. He got in the back and yanked the seatbelt on.

They headed off the hill where the airport was located. Monroe looked out the window only half listening to Hank and Mitchim make small talk. He could just see flat, gray water beneath a long line of early morning fog that followed the long curve of the river edging one side of the city.

"You guys need anything before we head out?" Mitchim asked. "Coffee, soda, bathroom, food."

They both declined. Monroe had packed a few muffins and brought his thermos along for the plane ride. And right now his stomach had so many knots he didn't think he'd be able to eat even if he were hungry.

"It's about half an hour to the lake." Mitchim reached over and flipped on the flashing lights. "I think we can make it in twenty. Sheriff's got a rendezvous point set up about five miles from the house where Capra is holed up."

"The Captain couldn't tell us much," Hank said. "He said someone in town identified Capra at the mechanic."

"Local gas station," Mitchim corrected. "Guy stopped in with a leaky radiator. He's been there a few times in the past couple years. Lester recognized him right away."

"After a couple visits? Months apart?" Hank asked doubtfully.

"Guy tried sweet talking Lester's daughter when she worked the counter," Mitchim said with a grin. "You can imagine that Lester wasn't real happy with the guy. She's off at college now. Oregon State. Going into Mechanical Engineering."

"He didn't touch her, did he?" Monroe asked, alarmed. They could be looking at more victims here as well.

"Nah," Mitchim laughed. "She finally told him that if he didn't back off she'd be well within her rights to pepper spray him in the face." He paused then looked at Monroe in the mirror. "Why do you ask?"

Hank exchanged a look with Monroe around the headrest. On the drive to the airport they had come up with a decently plausible explanation they could give to make people aware of the danger Capra posed without sounding too…kooky. Hank explained, "PPD's been seeing a small amount of an exclusive new drug in the bars and clubs. They call it," he made a face, "Z."

Monroe had to duck his head to hide a gleeful snigger. Hank had hated his suggestion and said it sounded stupid but hadn't been able to come up with anything better.

"Effects are similar to Ecstasy but without the morning-after memory loss," Hank continued. "And Capra's adapted it so he can wear it on his skin. All he has to do was touch someone."

"He used it to recruit his cult members," Monroe put in.

"Well that's just disturbing as hell."

"You don't know the half of it," Monroe muttered to himself. He gazed through the window as businesses gave way to houses that gave way to rolling farmland that in turn became thickly packed trees lining both sides of the road. Deputy Mitchim seemed to know the road, which corners he could cut and where there were straightaways he could take at speed.

"Lester's daughter remembered that he invited her out to a house by the lake," Mitchim continued. "Rosie at the grocery store recalled seeing him with Mark and Marsha Preston who happen to _have_ a house by the lake. Sheriff sent a deputy out there early this morning to check it out and guess what he saw in the driveway."

"A beige four-door sedan with Oregon plates," Hank supplied.

"Give the man his prize," Mitchim said in a decent imitation of a game show host. "Judge Simms signed search warrants for the sedan specifically, the house, and any and all vehicles and outbuildings on the premises for your partner or any paperwork, etcetera, etcetera that may lead to his whereabouts."

"And you're certain Capra's still there?" Hank asked.

"Sheriff's had Deputy Smyth sitting on the only road in or out since we found out where he was. Last report said that the Prestons and Capra were sitting down to breakfast. Another unidentified man and woman were there as well for a total of five."

"No sign of Nick—um, Detective Burkhardt?" Monroe asked before Hank could.

"Nothing yet." Mitchim's radio went off and he spent a few moments in a conversation Monroe only understood about a third of. "FBI is at the rendezvous spot. We're about five minutes out."

"Tell them to wait until we get there," Hank ordered.

"They're not gonna move without you," Mitchim promised. "Sheriff Collar will make sure of that."

Monroe was not comforted by the motley collection of vehicles in the parking lot. Four sheriff's department, one state police, one ambulance, and a forest service truck. The three shiny black SUVs parked in a row were much more reassuring.

Deputy Mitchim must have noticed his dismay. "It's a small town," he said apologetically. "They don't even have city police anymore. Everything is contracted through the Sheriff's Department now. That must be the FBI. The Sheriff said this unit includes their HRT specialist."

"What is HRT?" Monroe asked, eyeing the large and heavily armed men in black pulling gear out of the back of the big SUVs.

"Hostage recovery," Hank explained. "Crisis management. Tactical response. They're the best the FBI has."

"Cool."

"Very cool," Hank agreed. Some of the strain had eased around his eyes and mouth. Slipping on his sunglasses he opened his door.

The man that met them could have been the actor in every Marine/Army/Special Ops movie ever made. Blue eyes, scar along one side of a sharp chin, dark hair cut down to a flat-topped fuzz. "Chevie Davidson, Unit Commander."

"Detective Hank Griffin. This is Monroe." They shook hands. "You've been briefed?" Hank asked.

"On the drive. We have copies of Special Agent Rousse's files and pictures of Detective Burkhardt, Capra, and the property owners. Sheriff Collar has put together some blueprints and maps over here."

Monroe had no idea what to do so he tagged along. The tailgate of a Sheriff's truck had been turned into a makeshift briefing room with blowups of driver's license photos taped over the tail lights and maps and pictures and blueprints of a two story house spread across every available surface.

Sheriff Collar was about Hank's height, thin, and wiry tough beneath the tan uniform. The small, square mustache brought to mind Charlie Chaplin.

"Detective Griffin, Detective Monroe." Collar held out a hand.

"Just Monroe," he explained as he shook. "Not in any way a detective."

"Mr. Monroe is a psychic consultant with the Portland Police Department," Mitchim chimed in ever so helpfully.

Monroe winced as _everyone_ looked at him and opened his mouth to declare the lie for what it was.

Hank interrupted before he could get the first word out. "He's also a very close friend of my partner."

Monroe glowered. Great, now they thought he was Nick's gay _psychic_ lover.

"You've had someone watching the house?" Hank pushed on and Monroe was certain he was trying not to laugh. It was the way his mustache twitched like some strange little caterpillar.

"This," Sheriff Collar tapped a pencil on a map, "is the only road in or out by anything but ATV, horse, or boat. Deputy Smyth has been sitting on that since we confirmed that Capra's in the house. There's been some activity but nothing that could be construed suspicious and no one has left the property."

Monroe caught a whiff of familiar smell and stopped glaring at Hank to look around to see where it was coming from. One of the heavily armed, black-dressed SWAT team members was staring at him curiously. The man was a mountain and had a red cross on a black patch on his uniform. Cautiously Monroe woged and wasn't surprised when the other guy woged too. _Jagerbar_. As a medic. Huh.

"We're setting up here," Davidson said, pointing out a spot on the map that had the topographical lines of a small hill. "It's about a mile out from the house. We'll move in on foot from there."

"I have the PPD air support fueling up and ready to go at the airport," Hank told them.

Davidson looked surprised and pleased. "Excellent. Let's get him in the air." He paused and fixed Hank with a level stare. "I won't do you the discourtesy of asking you not to go in, but I will ask that you keep behind us and let us do our job."

"I've worked with special units before," Hank told him seriously. "I'll stay out of your way."

The _jagerbar_ de-woged and moved slowly through the crowd towards Monroe.

Monroe eyed him cautiously but figured the guy wouldn't start anything in the middle of a bunch of cops. The patch on his shirt said A. Gebhard. "Guten tag," he greeted as the _jagerbar_ drifted to a stop next to him. After some consideration he added, "Freund."

Gebhard gave him a friendly nod.

"And your…psychic consultant?" Davidson asked Hank a moue of distaste, clearly reluctant to even speak the word.

Monroe rolled his eyes aware the _jagerbar_ was watching him curiously.

"He's staying outside until the building is clear," Hank said looking at Monroe like he expected objections.

"Hey, I'm good with that," Monroe assured him. "You guys handle all the shooting and arresting and whatnot. I'm just here for moral support."

Davidson gave him a nod of approval. "Alright then. Let's gear up."

Monroe ended up in a Kevlar vest from Hank's duffle bag. "It's a little tight in the chest," he said and Hank loosened the side wrap an inch.

"It's Nick's back up vest out of my trunk. You won't have to wear it long."

Hank shrugged on his own vest. His usual 9mm was on one hip, his pet Taser on the other side of his belt, and some sort of compact assault rifle on a strap over his shoulder. He looked focused and competent and dangerous. Monroe felt like he was on an episode of Cops.

"Huddle up," Sheriff Collar called out. They gathered around him, checking weapons and gear as they formed a loose circle. "William Capra kidnapped a police officer and that put him at the top of FBI's most wanted. He's known to have at least two guns, including Detective Burkhardt's service weapon so even if you're not going into the house, stay cautious and keep your heads down. Detective Griffin you got anything you want to add?"

While Hank was explaining to everyone else that they shouldn't let Capra make skin on skin contact Monroe got close enough to the _jagerbar_ to murmur, "_Ziegevolk_."

"Capra?" Gebhard asked.

Monroe nodded. It was a relief that someone besides Hank would know what they were up against.

The man swore and spat in the dirt. Then he got a box of latex gloves out of an SUV and passed it around and made sure everyone had their shirt sleeves down and buttoned.

He thought they would leave then but the Sheriff quieted everyone down again and Davidson led them in a brief prayer for their safety and the safety of those they would be apprehending and rescuing. Out of the corner of his eye Monroe saw Hank tucking away a small silver medal into a pocket, a Saints medallion of some kind and he wondered which one it was.

Davidson crossed himself and bellowed, "Let's move out!"

Monroe rode with Deputy Mitchim, crammed in next to a state trooper named Juan and a woman in Forest Service green whose name he hadn't caught during introductions. There was a name tag on her jacket but he thought if he tried to read it now he'd probably just look like he was staring at her chest. She was short enough she was the only one in the back seat that didn't hit their head every time the truck hit a bump. The road was, in his opinion, disproportionally bumpy.

"This is PPB Air One," their pilot's voice came over the radio, smooth and calm. "I am thirty seconds out, coming in from the south."

Monroe braced a hand on the roof and attempted to decipher the radio chatter and suffered a moment of utter surrealism. What the hell was he doing so far away from home, surrounded by law enforcement types, on his way to rescue a Grimm?

"Copy, Air One. We are ETA three minutes."

Hank was in one of the black SUVs with the FBI and Monroe figured he wouldn't see him again until after the smoke had cleared, figuratively speaking.

The Sheriff's Office dispatcher broke in urgent and worried but Monroe could only understand a few of the codes and numbers she said. "What's happening?" he asked the vehicle at large.

"Dispatch just got a 911 call from the house," Juan the State Trooper clarified.

"Which house?" Monroe asked as they headed up the last ridge. "_That_ house!"

"That house," the man confirmed. "The line is still open but the dispatcher can't get anyone to respond."

Ahead of them the other vehicles accelerated over the hill. Mitchim mashed the gas pedal down and their SUV surged to catch up, engine straining.

"They're not stopping," Monroe realized. None of the vehicles were stopping. The plan had apparently just gone out the window. They in barreled to a stop not far from the beige 4-door sedan that still smelled strongly of coolant and Capra and Nick, which was vaguely reassuring. They hadn't been sure Capra hadn't already passed the Grimm on.

"Stay here and keep your head down," Mitchim ordered, looking over the seat at Monroe.

"Staying here," Monroe agreed emphatically. "Head down." Everyone else bailed out, weapons read, taking cover behind open doors or other vehicles. His seatmates Juan and Unnamed Forest Service girl had been in the Air Force and Navy respectively and appeared to know what they were doing.

The FBI team was already moving in. Monroe saw Hank and Gebhard ducking around the side of the porch. He felt a little better knowing Hank was with the _jagerbar_. As wesen went they were notoriously honorable and this one was a medic. Overhead there was the approaching drone of a small aircraft engine.

The house looked like the kind people built because they wanted to look rustic and country while staying impressively expensive. Steep A-Frame roof, cedar-shake siding, and an entire front wall of windows. Monroe liked a good view as much as the next _blutbad_ but it would take all day to wash that many windows.

"Air One," Davidson said, voice tinny through the radio, "any movement?"

"Negative. Not a sign."

Monroe sniffed a couple times. They were upwind from the house and he was getting a myriad of smells through the heavy scent of pine and exhaust and crushed grass and the cold, clinging fog creeping down the mountainside. He scrunched down a bit to see the house better and tugged at the Kevlar vest in a futile attempt to find a comfortable position.

"I have a question, Monroe," Mitchim said from his place behind the open driver's side door. He had the air of a man who knew the question wouldn't be appreciated but was going to ask it anyway. He didn't take his eyes or his weapon off the house.

"Go for it, man." There was no sign of movement in the house. All those windows meant surprise wasn't an option but it also meant they should see anyone moving around the living room and most of the kitchen but there was nothing.

"If you're a psychic, how come you didn't know where Capra was?"

Hank was a dead man. Seriously. Monroe's Sponsor would be disappointed, would give him that look that said he knew Monroe could do better, but he thought in this case he could live with that.

Aware they had an audience, Monroe opened his mouth to explain he wasn't really a psychic or a hostage negotiator or whatever the hell else Hank had told them when the radio came alive with Chevie Davidson murmuring, "Go, go, go."

The quiet mountain air exploded with shouts and the crash of doors being slammed open.

"We've got two coming out the back," Air One reported, "suspect one is headed into the trees. Suspect two is breaking north. Looks like both are female."

The front door slammed open and a man in jeans and a white sweater burst out, heading for a pickup truck parked in the driveway. He barely made it off the steps before one of the deputies took him down in a tackle that would have done an NFL linebacker proud.

Monroe winced in sympathy. It wasn't anyone he'd ever seen before, probably another one of Capra's recruits.

"Ouch," Forest Service girl commented as the pair skidded across the gravel. "That's gonna leave a mark."

Air One announced, "Okay, suspect two is circling north, headed for the docks."

Monroe looked towards the lake in time to see a woman being apprehended by two of the SWAT team.

"Suspect one is still moving. Straight ahead of you. Two hundred yards."

"I don't have a visual," someone replied.

Other people were calling out rooms as they were cleared and Monroe was reassured as he heard Hank's voice for a moment.

"One hundred yards. Bear left. Fifty yards. You're right on top of her. Right there."

Silence for the length of two heartbeats then, "Suspect is in custody."

The two women were brought around and sat down next to the man. Mitchim and State Trooper Juan moved over to help zip tie them wrist to wrist.

Monroe watched and waited until Davidson's voice came over the radio again. "All clear."

"We're going to need the ambulance up here," Mitchim added.

Monroe asked, "Did they find Nick?" And yes he knew that made him sound like the worst fake psychic consultant ever. "Someone ask if they found Nick." But he knew the answer was no. Hank or someone would have said that right away, someone would have said _something_.

TBC

_**Notes:**_ One more cliffie. I just couldn't resist. I know. Bad squirrel.

The city of Portland really does have an air support unit that does some awesome work. Fanfiction will not let me publish the link but you can Google Portland Police Department Air Support and pick the first option that comes up. Or go to AO3 where the link does publish. The mounted unit has a pretty neat video on how they train their horses as well. And check out the Sunshine Division link to see their soft, squishy side.


	12. Chapter 12

_**Notes: **_I'm a big liar, liar, squirrelly pants on fire. This chapter ended up sooooooo long I had to continue it. So just one more after this. Really, just one more.

Thanks to guest BJ for your kind words. Hopefully this will make you love me more than hate me. For a little while at least.

And guest Livia: I snuck a psychic little reference in here and there but mostly it's just Hank messing with Monroe and distracting himself from worrying.

_**Warnings: **_Language, imprisonment, death, violence, drugs, short soul-searching conversations, and secret holiday addictions.

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Hank came out to meet him at the steps. "They're still searching the outbuildings but Capra's not here and neither is Nick. And they," he scowled at the people lined up on the porch under watchful eyes, "aren't talking except to say they want lawyers."

"He was here." Nick's smell was all over the beige sedan, the steps, the doorframe. "He was in the house."

Hank nodded wearily. He looked like he wanted to sit down somewhere and not get up for a few hours, entirely abandoned by the tight, focused energy from before. "Good to hear but I'd already guessed that from the state of our kidnapping assistants here."

Monroe looked again and had to agree. One of the women had a black eye and the man had a bruise on his chin, a split lip, and was that a bite on his hand? That hadn't come from involuntarily re-grading the driveway with his front half.

"Even money says those teeth marks will match up to Nick's pearly whites." He paused to look smugly proud of his absent partner. "Can you tell how long ago Nick was here?"

"Out here? More than a day."

Hank deflated a little more. "Then Capra had plenty of time to put Nick in another vehicle, drive him…_somewhere_," he waved one hand in angry little circles, "and come back here before we even knew he was in the area." He gestured over his shoulder. "There's a room in the back I want you to look at."

The interior was straight out of Country Living by way of Outdoor Life. Exposed beams, animal heads, and antler chandeliers. A white flocked Christmas tree was still tucked in one corner, half undecorated. It was over-warm and over-cheerful and the strings of colored lights were irrationally aggravating. Kidnappers should not be allowed to have Christmas decorations. It was just…_not_ Christmassy.

The blend of spilled blood and sweat and fear and Capra and Nick grew stronger the farther towards the back of the house they moved. There was expensive art on the walls and a hutch full of fancy looking china and wine glasses Monroe would bet were the kind you could make sing.

Somewhere in Monroe's attic was a set his Great Grandmother had brought over on the big boat. He thought they might be in the back, left corner, halfway between his fourth Great Uncle's 16th century, hand-painted porcelain gravy tureen and Granddad's collection of ceramic hands. Granddad was a little odd even for _his_ family.

"Wait," he said as they came to the entrance of the hall. Nick's scent was strong and fresh here. "Wait, wait, wait. He went this way." The trail led to the back door. Down the steps and up a wide graveled path, past a woodshed and into the trees.

"Nick went that way?" Hank asked. "Recently?"

"Ten minutes or less. Nick. And Capra." He paused to sort through the smells. "And at least one other person I don't know. Definitely male."

"Will it mess you up having the plane overhead?" Hank demanded.

"Hearing wise, yes, a little. But it should be of adequate altitude it won't disturb the scent trail enough to matter."

"Air One," Hank said into his radio, "we have a possible location of two missing suspects and hostage. Request a sweep behind the house."

"Air One, roger that, Detective."

There was a gap, a separation, between Nick's scent and the other two. He hoped that it meant Nick had escaped and was on the run. He smelled of three days of limited access to hygiene facilities and fear and he was bleeding but not enough for more than cuts and scrapes.

Monroe moved into a jog, aware of Mitchim and Gebhard coming down the steps and two more of the SWAT team moving around the side of the house to join them. The trees were widely spaced here, the brush thinned, and they didn't have to do more than watch for rocks and occasional patches of old snow.

"I have two males at you're twelve o'clock," Air One said. "Approximately half a mile ahead."

Monroe's next breath brought blood smell heavy and strong. A glance over at Gebhard showed that he'd smelled it too, probably before Monroe had, and was half woged in response.

Hank started to ask for descriptions but was interrupted. "Oh man," Air One broke in, "there's a third man down and not moving. That's a _lot_ of blood, guys. We need to get the medics rolling."

"Where?" one of the SWAT team demanded, only a little out of breath at the fast pace.

Hank didn't wait. "Monroe! Can you _sense_ him?" He put so much emphasis on that one word it stopped Monroe for a moment before he realized why.

Hank was a flippin' genius. Dammit.

The whole psychic thing was a perfect cover for a blutbad's…extraordinary talents.

"Then go get him!"

Monroe started to run. He leaped a small ravine, hopped a fallen tree aware that the _jagerbar_ was the only one keeping up with him. Every breath was thicker and heavier with blood.

The body was on its back in a clearing the size of his kitchen, sprawled over a patch of old crusted, snow. The snow, the gray sweater vest and slacks, and the smart blue shirt were all horrifically spattered with blood, blood, _blood_.

Not Nick. He'd known that before he saw it but _seeing_ it was still a _relief_. It was, he realized with a sense of vicious satisfaction, the _ziegevolk_. His throat had been torn out and not by something so clean as claws or teeth. A stub of broken branch stuck out of the wound, dark with drying blood.

Gebhard stopped a few feet away, making no move to get nearer. "Well, he's dead."

"Yep," Monroe agreed and he probably sounded a little too happy about that but right now he didn't care.

"You think this was Burkhardt?"

"Oh yeah." Nick was all over this.

Gebhard grinned, sharp and toothy. "I read his file." He nodded at Capra's body. "Couldn't have happened to a more deserving person."

Monroe smirked a little. He was starting to like this guy.

Blood-smell swamped everything but he didn't need his nose to find the trail. He followed the path of churned and bloody snow until it turned into smeared footprints and overturned rocks but by then he'd caught movement through the trees and put on a burst of speed.

The last of Capra's minions was wearing all black, which Monroe thought was fitting. He had a gun pointed at Nick. Nick who was blood soaked all down the front and still had half the stick he'd used to take out the _ziegevolk_ clenched in one hand.

Monroe didn't even slow down. He slammed into the gunman at full tilt, sending him flying. He started after him but the _jagerbar_ was there, weapon drawn. Gebhard shouted for the guy to drop the gun and get on his knees and all the other things cops did instead of just shooting the bastard who had helped the guy who had _kidnapped_ Monroe's friend. Unfortunately the man showed the remarkable good sense to do as he was told which probably kept Monroe from breaking several of the promises he'd made to himself when he'd gone into rehab.

And Nick—hell Nick was full on _Grimm_ in a way that made every last hair stand on end. Blood soaked to the elbows, hair wild, eyes solid black—and Monroe was really, really hoping that was the drugs and the

_ziegevolk_ pheromone. This was the Grimm that the mere _imagining_ of had sent his childhood self scurrying to pull Grandma's quilt up around his ears.

He looked really, really _angry_. And about a minute away from complete collapse. But mostly _angry_.

"Hey, Nick, buddy," he began hesitantly. "You want to put down the stick, buddy?"

Nick didn't look like he wanted to put down the stick. He was handcuffed in the front probably with his own cuffs, Monroe belatedly realized, and his knuckles were white he was gripping so hard. He thought it would likely calm Nick down if he looked a little more human but he couldn't quite make the woge retract faced with a Grimm who was _literally_ dripping blood.

He was considering the wisdom of trying to take the stick away versus waiting for Hank when Gebhard finished zip tying the man on the ground and straightened up. "Fucking hell!" the _jagerbar_ yelped and jumped back, dragging his gun out again.

Monroe put himself in front of Nick hoping that he wasn't about to get stabbed in the back and growled a warning at the other man.

Gebhard dropped out of his woge but his eyes were still fierce and his teeth a little sharp as he gesture Monroe to the side. "Move, man, he's a Grimm!"

Monroe growled out, "I know," and managed to de-woge entirely. Mostly. "But he's not like the Grimm's you've heard about. He doesn't kill wesen."

Gebhard gave him a disbelieving look and really Monroe had to admit it was justified. "Well yeah, okay, he killed Capra." Not too far away he could hear Hank and the others. He only had a few minutes before four more cops burst out of the trees and really made a mess of things. "_But_ that was his first time and the guy deserved it—you said it yourself."

Gebhard's gun lowered an inch. "You protect him," he said tightly. "A _blutbad_ protecting a Grimm."

"Not the norm I know. Trust me, I _know_. But Nick's different. He saved my life." It sounded cold when he said it like that. Like he was defending Nick as payment for a debt. "He's my friend."

"Your friend," Gebhard repeated, looking past him to Nick. Just _looked_ for a long, long moment and whatever he saw must have convinced him. The gun went back into the holster. "He's also about to pass out. You'd better catch him. And don't think we're not talking about this later." The _jagerbar_ stomped over to the edge of the little clearing, glaring in passing at the zip tied prisoner so hard the man turned white.

Monroe spun around and found his arms full of wobbly Grimm thankfully sans sharp, pointy stick. By the time he got Nick settled on a mostly dry patch of ground under the tree Hank and the others caught up with them.

Hank immediately knelt beside them and took Nick's face between his hands. "Nick, partner, I'd hug you but you're kinda gross right now what with all the blood and…stuff."

Nick blinked at him then nodded faintly. "I killed him."

"I know," Hank said. He dropped his forehead against Nick's, relief in every line of his body. "I know."

"He said—he said he was going to go after her next," Nick whispered.

Monroe glanced after the others but they were all gathered around the prisoner. One of Gebhard's teammates was asking after his health. He was still a little pale and, while he wasn't fully woging, a shadow of fur kept rippling over his bare arms every time he looked in Nick's direction. Monroe remembered his first Grimm encounter; he thought the guy was handling it pretty well. At least no one had locked themselves in a bathroom. Yet.

The _jagerbar_ waved them off. "Fine, fine. Just a lot of blood. You know how it hits me sometimes."

That seemed to placate the other man. He made a joke about medics who fainted at the sight of blood causing Gebhard to roll his eyes with the air of someone who had heard it before and knew he would again.

"Juliette?" Hank asked sitting back. "Capra was going after her?"

Monroe punctured the hem of his sweater before he managed to retract his claws.

"And the baby. He knew she was pregnant," Nick said and Monroe winced, oh man, Juliette had never had a chance to tell him otherwise. "He knew…." Nick paused, visibly struggling to pull his thoughts together. "…he knew about Monroe. Knew about Juliette."

"She's safe," Hank told him, using his grip to shake Nick a little to get his attention. "Captain put a guard on her after we found her picture missing from your wallet." He knelt up to get his keys out of his pocket and went to work on the handcuffs. "Let's get these off you."

Monroe started on the length of cloth around Nick's throat. A gag, he surmised, that Nick had tugged down over his chin. It was tight and double knotted. "You must have really pissed them off," Monroe commented as he carefully, delicately picked apart the knots with his claws and eased the cloth loose. The inside was a tie-dye pattern of blood and saliva. He tossed it away in disgust.

"Yeah," Nick nodded and wobbled sideways. He was fading out again, eyes trying to close.

Hank shook him again. "Stay awake, Nick. Come on."

Gebhard stomped back over. "Move," he ordered, pushing in and pulling off his pack.

Monroe hesitated long enough Hank gave him a questioning look, but he thought that if the _jagerbar_ wanted to harm the Grimm he could have done it before all the witnesses showed up. Backing up a few steps he ended up next to Mitchim who was still panting for air and grinning like a loon. "Guess you really are psychic," he said.

Hank glanced back at them and chuckled. Monroe would have growled at him for that except there was so much _relief_ in it.

In short order, Gebhard had Nick wrapped in a crinkly, silver, emergency blanket and with Hank's help fed him a little water. Nick was groggy and had a hard time answering Gebhard's questions. "Do you know what they gave you? When did you last eat? How long had it been since you had water? Were your hands restrained behind or in front?"

"Nick," Gebhard said, "you still with me?" He tapped Nick's cheek with his fingers until Nick's drifting gaze focused.

Nick blinked and blurted out, "So furry."

Gebhard shook his head in mild amusement and patted his cheek again, gently. To Hank he said, "I'm going to start an IV. _If_ I can find a vein," he added in a low mutter.

It took him several tries then Monroe was put to work standing like a lamp post, keeping the bag elevated. He stared at the cut lip, the fingerprint bruises smudging the skin on the back of Nick's neck, chin, and cheek, visible even through three days' worth of beard, and clenched his free hand into a fist.

Mitchim and the SWAT guys were efficiently handling the rest of the details such as the other suspect and the body. "Do you want the paramedics out here?" Mitchim swung by to ask at one point. He'd been back to his vehicle and returned with two big rolls of crime scene tape and a camera.

Gebhard shook his head, not looking up from his examination. "More people out here won't help matters. There's nothing that won't keep another few minutes. In fact there's not much that won't keep until we've run you through the shower," he added to Nick, "so we can see what's under all this mud and blood."

"Stretcher?" Mitchim asked.

"Do you think you can stand?" Gebhard asked Nick and Nick nodded with unsteady insistence. "Right then. Let's get you somewhere a little more comfortable." He directed Hank and Monroe into position. "Be careful of his arms," he warned then said directly to Nick, "They're going to hurt like hell when the drugs wear off."

"Can't really feel my hands," Nick admitted, slumping against Hank. "Oh hey, Monroe." His eyebrows crinkled together in worried confusion. "What're you doing here?"

"Hey," Monroe said back and had to look away to keep from woging out of sheer pissed off _rage_. Every time Nick moved a wave of _ziegevolk_ pheromone flared off of him. It was on his clothes, on his skin, in his hair. Anger built in Monroe's chest, thick and burning, and he had to _not_ think about that _creature_ touching Nick over and over until the pheromones were a thick, unctuous layer Monroe could all but _see_. "Hank and I carpooled," he managed to choke out in a nearly normal voice. "He promised to drop me in Seattle. I've never been up in the Space Needle."

Nick slow-blinked at him a couple times before he got the joke and grinned. "Can't have that."

The walk back was slow going, the terrain rough, and Nick had to rest before they'd made it a hundred yards. Monroe marveled that the man had gotten out of the house let alone run through the woods and killed a wesen with a stick.

Monroe watched Hank push back the emergency blanket and lift Nick's arm, touching carefully around a line of puncture marks up the tender skin of his forearm. His fingers were gentle; the rest of his body was tight as overstrung cable.

Nick's hand twitched into a loose fist and he turned his head where it rested against Monroe's shoulder to look at his partner.

"That's a lot of needle marks," Hank remarked softly.

Nick admitted, "I wasn't a very good hostage."

"I'll be sure to put that on your yearly review," Hank said fondly. He tugged the blanket back into place. "You ready to get out of here?"

Nick nodded and let out a shaky, "Yeah."

They took a shorter route back to the house and then cut _through_ the house for the sake of Nick's unsteady legs, crinkly blanket crinkling loudly with every step.

Nick looked around the living room. "Wow. Nice place."

Monroe wanted to smash it all. _Logically_ he knew the owners were just as much the victim as any of the twenty-six people pulled out of Capra's cult compound but logic wasn't helping when he was looking at the bruised and reddened skin at the corners of Nick's mouth where the gag had dug in.

Gebhard collared one of his teammates to organize a search for whatever they had injected Nick with. "Check the refrigerators first. Bring me needles, pills, anything you find."

"It was a tiny, tiny bottle," Nick volunteered, holding up his fingers a bare centimeter apart. "Like the kind they give flu shots out of. At least the first time." He rubbed at his forehead slowly. "I was kinda fuzzy for the rest."

Gebhard patted his back with a large hand. "I think you were kinda fuzzy for that part too."

The ambulance had backed up close to the porch so all they had to do was get Nick down the stairs and across two steps worth of gravel. Gebhard climbed in after him, making the vehicle sink under his weight. There was only room because one of the paramedics was tending to the guy who had played tackling dummy in the driveway.

"Hello, Detective," the other paramedic said, already gloved up and pulling out a blood pressure cuff. "My name is Allen and I will be your medic today."

"You can call me Nick."

"Hi, Nick." Allen had a nice smile, a kind and trustworthy smile. "I'm going to start by taking your blood pressure and temperature, alright? I'll let you know before I touch you and if you need a break at any time you just let me know."

Monroe walked away, yanking at the straps of the bulletproof vest until he could get it off then sat down on the steps where he could keep an eye on Hank and Nick, taking deep breaths of cool, pine scented air. The fog had slunk further down the mountainside, stretching long tendrils down towards the lake. His hands were shaking a little as he pulled out his cell and dialed Juliette's number.

Hank took up residence at Nick's side and over the ringing phone Monroe could hear him catching Nick up on the last three days in between sentences from the medics like, "Does this hurt?" and "How many times did they drug you?"

"I'm here." Juliette's voice was slightly breathless over the phone as if she'd run to grab it. "I'm here. Sorry. I was in the shower. Tell me good news."

"We found him."

Silence for a moment then an explosive breath that was half sigh of relief, half laugh. "Oh, thank God. How is he? Is he alright?"

"The paramedics are looking at him right now but he's talking and even mostly coherent."

"Thank God," she breathed again. "Where are you?"

He gave her the details then carried the phone to the ambulance and passed it to Hank who had a brief contest of stubbornness with the medics before they agreed to have let Nick have the cell. They laid Nick down on the gurney and Hank tucked the phone under his ear so he wouldn't have to hold it.

"Hey," Nick said shakily into the mouthpiece. "Are you ok?"

Monroe returned to sit on the steps, bracing his chin in his hands, elbows on knees, wallowing in the feeling of _relief_. His legs were shaky with spent adrenaline and he wanted a good stiff drink. They had passed a bar in town; maybe he'd invite Hank and Deputy Mitchim and the whole SWAT team out for a glass or two.

Someone came running out of the house with a salad bowl full of pill bottles and various assorted suspicious items. The other paramedic returned to the ambulance to dig through it and, evicted for lack of space, Hank came to sit next to Monroe. "My last partner," he said, apropos of nothing, "was boring."

"Really?" He'd never really considered Hank's work life before Nick though he'd gathered that they'd only been partners for a couple years. Nick had taken the detective's exam not too long after he'd started dating Juliette. She'd mournfully mentioned once how much she missed the uniform that only came out now for banquets and funerals but was willing to give it up for the comfort of knowing he was off traffic stops.

"Yep. Never, in the five years we worked together, did he end up in the hospital for anything worse than a sprained ankle from stepping in pothole. We weren't even _chasing_ anyone at the time."

"That does sound pretty boring," Monroe agreed not sure where he was going with this.

"No calls in the middle of the night because some weird creature with a grudge tried to kill him."

"Nights of good, solid sleep. Very boring."

Hank snorted softly. "You have no idea."

He did actually. Very well. "They say challenges keep you young."

"Any more _challenges_ and I'll be a teenager again." Hank shuddered dramatically. "Man, those were _not_ my best years."

Monroe recalled _his_ teenage years with a shudder of his own. "My last partner flipped her motorcycle and ended up in jail for a DUI," Monroe admitted because it was apparently sharing time. "She'll be out in seven to ten years. Knowing her, probably ten."

"For a DUI? Repeat offender?"

"Um, she might have tried to attack the judge at the arraignment."

Hank rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, shoulders slumping, his reply coming out a little muffled. "That would do it."

"And her court appointed lawyer."

Hank raised his head to stare at him.

"And, um, a corrections officer."

Hank gave him a wide eyed look of awe. "Damn, Monroe."

"I ran with a _slightly_ wilder crowd back then," he confessed.

"I guess so." His lips are pressed together to suppress a grin and his eyes are bright. "Guess you aren't as stodgy as you look."

"Stodgy!" Monroe sputtered.

"You're wearing a Christmas sweater in January," Hank pointed out ruthlessly.

"Snowflakes! Snowflakes are seasonal!"

"Uh huh."

Monroe drew breath to retort and realized that Nick and everyone else in the ambulance was staring at them in amusement. Nick dropped his head back to talk into the phone. "No, that's just Hank and Monroe arguing about clothes like an old married couple."

"Seasonal," Monroe muttered.

Hank bumped his shoulder. "I keep a couple strings of colored lights up inside until summer," he admitted, a peace offering for something Monroe wasn't really upset about anyway. "Just to remind me that there is something besides winter gray."

Monroe turned on him, accusing finger pointed. "You're a secret Christmas addict, aren't you?"

"I can neither confirm nor deny," Hank said smartly, "an affinity for any specific holiday."

Comfortable silence fell while they watched the other suspects being put into various vehicles and hauled away. The guy who'd skidded on the gravel put up a fuss, complaining he was going to sue for the cost of plastic surgery. He wasn't getting a lot of sympathy.

"He really killed Capra, didn't he?" Hank said suddenly. He nodded towards the ambulance and Nick who had just about passed out again.

Monroe glanced around but they were the only ones left on the porch.

"With a stick." Hank shook his head and scratched at his neck. "He can barely manage a whole sentence and he killed a guy with a freakin' stick. How does that happen?"

"Grimms," Monroe glanced at the ambulance and the _jagerbar_ who was poking through the bowl of drugs. "Are generally stronger, faster, and quicker to heal than the average human. They have to be to keep up with us."

Hank looked at him for a moment then followed his gaze to the ambulance. "The medic is wesen, right?"

Monroe glanced sideways at him in surprise. "_Jagerbar_. Did you see him woge?"

Hank shook his head and said, "He has the tic."

"The tic?" Monroe repeated slowly.

"Yeah, that twitchy little spasm you all have when you're changing."

"Spasm!" He did _not_ spasm. "You try having your bones and muscles and ligaments and—and skin—rearranged and see how much you _spasm_."

Hank rolled his eyes. "I'm not saying it's on par with eating kittens. It's a freakin' tic. I'm just happy I've found a way to at least _guess_ who is and who isn't wesen."

That made Monroe pause. Being born and raised among wesen he could only try to imagine how Nick had felt suddenly surrounded by things he had been raised to believe were monsters. It must be so much worse to know the monsters were there and not be able to see them at all. Hank, he decided was very brave.

TBC

_**Notes:**_ Yes, that's right with one paragraph I put Angelina in jail which means she wasn't around to kill Orson's brothers which means—say it with me—Hap LIVES!

And it wasn't a cliffhanger. Good squirrel.


	13. Chapter 13

_**Notes: **_Thanks guest BJ for your lovely words. Hank definitely needs more fic time. Pesterfield I'm making you my official beta. Seriously, PM me, I need you.

_**Warnings:**_ Language, injurious injuries or in other words Nick whumpage, Monroe's wolf poking its head out just a little (that sounded less dirty in my mind), partial nudity (I know, I should have tried harder), and completely unnecessary underwear references.

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Monroe shut the door of the hospital room with a quiet snick. If Nick was still asleep he didn't want to be the one to wake him.

"I'm up," Nick said from behind the curtain.

"It's just me. Are you decent?"

"Um, mostly."

"Not an answer, dude," Monroe scoffed and pulled aside the curtain. The blinds were down and the lights off except for a lamp on the table across the room. Nick was sitting sideways on the hospital bed, pale and bruised in the dim lighting but, hey, upright and talking.

"You have your pants on," Monroe observed cheerfully. "I was fully prepared for awkward and traumatizing levels of nudity."

Nick brought out a small smirk, only wincing a little as the expression pulled on sore skin. "Sorry to disappoint. There would have been less nudity but…." He trailed off staring pitifully at the t-shirt crumpled on his lap.

"You can't lift your arms that high." Three days with his arms cuffed behind his back hadn't done the man any favors but the doctors had determined that there would be no lasting damage just sore muscles and a month of weekly visits to the physical therapist. "It's amazing how we take something like that for granted until we can't do it. Like blinking. You never think about blinking until you're really, really tired and your eyelids feel like elephants are sitting on them—"

Rounding the end of the bed, he stopped dead, staring. There was an oval bruise on Nick's chest he hadn't seen before. It was the size of a man's knee and there was a hand print on his left bicep where they'd _held him down_.

"I'm alright, Monroe," Nick said softly, looking up at him from under a thatch of bangs with wide gray eyes.

Abruptly he realized he was growling, low and guttural, and made it stop.

"You can…" he made a gesture that looked vaguely like he was swatting at a fly, "…do the sniffing thing if you need to." He grinned suddenly, a flash of teeth in the dim light. "But no licking."

Part of Monroe took a moment to be thrilled that he now had in-jokes. The rest was all for taking Nick up on his offer and finally easing the last of the worry that had lodged in his gut for the past four days.

Monroe buried his nose in Nick's throat. He'd showered, washing off the blood and mud and _ziegevolk_ stench, but there was a lingering chemical tang of the drugs still passing out of his body, the faintest taint of the pheromone doing the same, chlorine, muscle rub all down the back of his neck and shoulders, and…and peaches and cream body-wash? Very manly.

"Don't laugh," Nick complained. "It took three showers to get that damn pheromone off. I went through half a bottle of my stuff left then had to resort to Juliette's."

"I'll take peaches over _ziegevolk_ any day." He touched gentle fingers to the skin around the bruises on Nick's collarbone and freshly shaven jaw. "If you hadn't killed him, I would have."

Nick frowned up at him. "Not your job. I'm glad you didn't have to."

Pulling back, Monroe picked up the shirt and searched out the tag to figure out which way was the front. "I wish _you_ hadn't had to," he said, "but as first kills go it was pretty spectacular. I mean, stick through the _neck._" He attempted to make the appropriate hand movements but ended up tangled in Nick's t-shirt. "Impressive."

Nick rolled his eyes and ducked his head, scratching gingerly at a forearm.

"Are you, ah, okay with it then?" he thought to ask.

Nick lifted his head and it was all Monroe could do not to retreat to the other side of the room. Woo boy, those were definitely Grimm eyes. "The moment he said Juliette's name he was dead."

Monroe nodded easy agreement with that. As far as he was concerned Capra was dead the moment he decided it would be a good idea to pad his bank account by selling a Grimm.

Nick dropped his gaze again, shoulders slumping, and he was no longer the Grimm he was just Nick, hurting and exhausted. "The room they kept me in…did you see it?"

He'd seen it. Stripped bare from the ceiling to the floorboards, windows boarded up and draped, it would have been pitch black when the light was off. He hadn't lingered.

"When they came in to drug me, Capra would ask me questions about Juliette. What her schedule was, where she would be." Nick smiled thinly. "I think I told him to fuck off several times."

Of course he had.

"And I recall being extremely worried that I was going to be late for dinner."

Of course he was.

Nick glanced up, catching the look on Monroe's face. "Hey, I was drugged," Nick defended, but he was smiling too. "And I kept thinking that you were right."

"Of course I was." Monroe straightened Nick's shirt out and rucked up the bottom until the arm holes were clearly visible. "You're going to have to be more specific about which instance."

"Ha," Nick said then paused to breath heavily as he got first one hand then the other successfully through. "I meant about Capra not staying in jail. There was only one way this was ever going to end."

Monroe winced as he eased the shirt up to Nick's elbows, scraping over the Band-Aids littering the insides of his arms. "This would be a lot easier if you stuck with the little cotton gown."

"No," Nick said bluntly.

Monroe huffed a little but couldn't blame him. "Right then, can you lift your arms high enough to get this over your head?"

Not so much.

"Hmmmm…okay maybe if you—duck—duck your head—no not like that! Here—let me—there. Ah ha. Success."

Nick dropped his head into his hands, leaving Monroe to tug his shirt down and smooth it over his sweaty back.

"You alright? And by that I mean actually alright and not Nick values of alright?"

"Headache," Nick muttered. "Fucking _ziegevolk_. "

"You want me to get the nurse?"

Nick made an effort to straighten up. "I'm two hours away from being able to get more OTC painkillers and the stuff they _will_ give me now will mess me up. Is Juliette outside?"

"She and Hank went out for food." He checked his watch. He'd sat in the hall for about forty-five minutes before he'd gone in to see if Nick was awake. "They're probably back by now. You want me to see if she's outside?"

"Please." He eased back onto the bed by inches, letting his shoulders and head down on the pillow with a sigh.

Monroe started for the door then spun around and marched back. "She—ah—Juliette that is…. Did she tell you…?"

"That she wasn't actually pregnant?" Nick asked. "She told me."

"Oh. Good." That was slightly less awkward then. "So? Are you happy, sad, mildly apathetic?" Nick wasn't giving him a lot to work with as far as facial expressions went.

"I'm fairly relieved. At this point in our lives we'd have trouble keeping a turtle alive much less a child. But, you know, maybe in a couple years when things have settled down."

"That's a good plan. We'll start you out slow. Maybe a fichus or a goldfish." Monroe poked his head out the door, spotted the familiar red hair just popping around the corner, loaded down with take-out bags. Hank was right behind her with a drink carrier in one hand, cell phone in the other.

"Hey, sorry we took so long." Juliette set the bags onto the end of the bed by Nick's feet. "I think they were waiting for the lettuce to grow." Rounding the bed she dropped a kiss on the top of Nick's head. "How's your headache?"

Nick wobbled a hand in a so-so movement. "I was hoping you had aspirin in your purse so I wouldn't have to bother the nurse." He shot Monroe a look when he opened his mouth to remind Nick that he'd just said he couldn't have more pills for a couple hours.

Monroe lifted his hands in surrender. If Nick thought he could handle it, he wasn't going to say anything. Chances were, as a Grimm, he was burning through the meds faster than normal anyway.

Juliette dug a bottle out of her purse and shook out two pills, handing them over with the water from the bedside table. "Here you go, hon. Your doctor said you could have regular food so long as you didn't overdo it. So," she dug into the plastic bag and came up with a Styrofoam cup and spoon. "Chicken noodle soup and crackers. And if you eat all that there may be pie in your future." Pushing the tray table closer she set the food on it, popping the lid off the soup.

"Ooooh, pie," Nick said, giving her a cheeky grin.

Juliette smoothed the hair back from his forehead. "Cherry pie."

"My favorite." He gave her a sunny smile and picked up his spoon, searching a bit for a way to hold it that didn't hurt.

Hank entered, tucking his phone into his pocket. "That was the Captain. They'll be here in forty minutes."

"Renard is coming here?" Monroe asked, somewhat alarmed. He hadn't yet found a good moment to bring up that whole Royal connection thing what with Nick being mostly unconscious and then in cleanup and then sedated and then in x-ray and then actually sleeping.

"He's driving up with the union rep and precinct lawyer," Hank explained. He took the Styrofoam tray Juliette handed him and found a chair, dragging it closer so he could use the end of the bed as a table.

Juliette pulled another carton out of the bag and read the name on the top in black marker. This one's yours, Monroe. Why are they coming here? We'll be back in Portland tomorrow."

"The Sheriff and county prosecutor are coming to take a statement," Nick said, "and decide if they'll press charges for Capra's death."

"Charges!" Monroe gasped overlapping Juliette who was complaining, "The man kidnapped _you_. They should charge _him_ with that posthumously."

That explained, Monroe realized, Nick's insistence on real clothes and no pain pills.

"It's not likely," Hank talked over top of them both. "They're just dotting the I's and crossing the T's. Renard's being his usual meticulous self, making sure none of this comes back and bites Nick in the ass ten years from now."

Juliette's scowl deepened and she stabbed viciously at her lunch with her plastic fork.

"Hey," Nick touched a hand to her arm. "It'll be fine."

Juliette frowned at him and the two of them had a whole silent conversation with their eyes while Hank pretended fascination with his sandwich. Monroe rested his chin on his fist and stared unabashedly. It was like one of those Spanish soap operas with all the big eyes and meaningful looks.

Finally Juliette let out a long breath and squeezed Nick's hand and Nick tangled their fingers together, forcing both of them to eat one handed. "Did you guys find a nice hotel?" he asked.

Subject firmly changed then.

They had finished lunch and were sitting around planning the drive home when Nick's Captain arrived, assorted suits in tow. After about fifteen minutes sitting in the waiting room worrying, Juliette declared they might as well take a walk.

"It could be hours," she said, texting Hank (who had been allowed to stay in the room with Nick) as they headed out the door. "We might as well see the town. Find a good coffee shop."

It was sunny but the wind was brisk and chill, coming off the snow-topped mountains that towered over the town. Monroe zipped his jacket to his chin and asked, "Which way looks good."

Juliette paused to tuck her hair up under a hat. "I don't suppose you can smell good coffee from this distance, can you?"

"If there's good coffee to smell," he tapped the side of his nose, "I'll sniff it out." He took a deep breath and mostly got gas and oil and exhaust and pine trees but very faintly he caught the subtle waft of fresh brew. "That way." He pointed across the parking lot then realized that he was also pointing directly at A. Gebhard, FBI SWAT medic, just getting out of a beat up Chevy pickup that had probably been pretty fancy back in the 70's.

Dressed in jeans, sweatshirt, and a Mariner's baseball cap Monroe recognized him mostly because of his height and build. Spotting them, he headed their direction and Monroe did introductions. "Juliette this is…I have no idea what your rank is. Or if I should even use it since you're not on duty."

"Aaron is fine." Gebhard offered a hand to Juliette. "Ma'am."

"Juliette, please. Were you on the team that rescued Nick?"

"Yes, ma'am. I'm with the FBI."

"He's the team medic."

"Oh, Nick mentioned you." She beamed at him and the big man turned a nice shade of fuchsia. "Something about impressive furriness."

"Furriness?" Gebhard repeated flatly.

"He was still pretty out of it," Juliette apologized, trying really hard not to smile.

"And it was _impressive_ furriness," Monroe pointed out. "Of course I think he's only seen two _jagerbar _besides you so…."

Gebhard didn't seem to appreciate his attempt to help and glared, pointing a finger. "_You_ still owe me an explanation."

"We are just headed out in search of decent coffee," Juliette said. "You should come along and grill Monroe out of this wind." She looped her arm through his, effectively stopping any escape.

The other arm was offered to Monroe and he took it bemusedly.

"Right then." She started off in the direction Monroe had pointed out. "Wow, you two make excellent windbreaks."

"So glad we could be of service," Monroe chuckled.

Gebhard chuffed a little. But he was smiling, obviously charmed by Juliette's forwardness. "Should I be worried that I'm walking with another Grimm?" he asked, plainly not worried.

"Oh, not me," she demurred. "Just boring old human."

"But you know about us?"

"I know a little. Nick…well. It's complicated."

Gebhard snorted. "I don't doubt it. How about," he said mildly, "an explanation as to why a _blutbad_ is willing to step in front of a loaded gun to protect a Grimm?"

"Monroe," Juliette said, looking up at him, "you did that?"

Monroe said weakly, "Um…."

"He did," Gebhard volunteered for him.

Monroe curled his lip at the _jagerbar_ over Juliette's head. Gebhard just smirked at him. He couldn't believe he'd actually _liked_ the guy.

"Oh, Monroe." Freeing her arms, she hugged him _so_ tight. "That's for protecting Nick." Then she stepped back and punched him in the arm. "And that's for putting yourself in danger. You're important to us too you know."

"Ow. Sorry," he offered. The punch hadn't hurt. Much. But it must have rattled something loose because his chest felt odd of a sudden, warm and achy at the same time.

Threading her arm through his again, she ordered sternly, "Just don't do it again."

"Believe me I have absolutely no intentions towards future self-endangerment." Lies. Complete and utter lies. If he really meant that he'd never speak to the Grimm again. So long, hasta luego, have a good life. Back to his empty house and his routine and the ticking of his clocks filling up the silence.

Monroe rubbed his chest with his free hand, capturing the lingering warmth of the knowledge that he had people who cared.

"Come on boys. I see a café sign right down there."

"I don't get a hug?" Gebhard complained obviously teasing, but Monroe threw him a little growl all the same.

Juliette elbowed him in the ribs and smiled up at Gebhard. "Have you had lunch? I'm buying."

"An offer I can't refuse."

() () ()

"In the forest," Gebhard started once they had all picked out drinks and food and a table in the back where they could talk quietly, "Monroe said that your Nick was a newby."

Juliette nodded and looked up at him through the steam coming off her cup. She'd kept her hat on but a few tendrils of hair had escaped, falling around her face, and her cheeks were pink from the cold. "Just a few months. His parents died when he was young and they had never told him about any of this. Then a few months ago some long lost relative he'd thought had died two decades ago actually did die and Nick started seeing…well you guys."

"Man," Gebhard said, sucking air through his teeth in a surprised noise, "that must have been one hell of a shock."

"To say the least," Monroe said. He sampled his chocolate chip muffin. Not bad.

"He tried to hide it from me for the first week," Juliette said. "When he finally fessed up we started going to doctors. Spent a few months thinking he had a brain tumor or some sort of hereditary disease or something equally awful."

"His parents didn't tell him _anything_?" Gebhard asked incredulously. "That seems rather shortsighted."

Monroe snapped his fingers and pointed. "Bingo."

Juliette sighed. "I think they were trying to protect him. There was a car accident when Nick was twelve and all of a sudden they up and moved to Portland. And as far as Nick was able to remember they stopped doing whatever normal Grimm's do and stuck to regular jobs."

Gebhard shook his head and sipped his drink. "Still. You have to assume there's a fair chance your kid is going to inherit more than the good silver when you pass on. It's amazing he didn't end up going nuts. Most people do when they get a look at us."

"Did _you_ think he was crazy?" Monroe asked Juliette. He knew Nick had spent some sleepless nights trying to convince himself he wasn't.

Juliette gave the question a lengthy moment of consideration. "Nick is one of the most down to earth people I've ever met. It never really occurred to me to think it was anything except a medical issue." She licked a finger and swiped it through the scattering of crumbs on her plate. "And some of the people he saw reacted…oddly. It wasn't just that he was staring at them; you could tell that they knew he was seeing something different. Hank noticed it too."

Gebhard sat up straighter. "His partner knows?"

Juliette nodded. "Yep. Yours don't?"

"No." He pulled a face. "I mean, they know I'm..."

"Special," Monroe suggested.

"Special," Gebhard repeated an amused grin spreading over his face. "Special like a blutbad who hangs out with a Grimm."

"In his defense," Juliette said, "Nick did sort of recruit Monroe against his will."

"Really?" Gebhard asked, laughing. "This I must hear."

Juliette waved a hand at him which Monroe took to mean he was to tell that story while she nibbled her heart-healthy, whole-grain cinnamon roll.

"So I'm sitting at home one day, innocently minding my own business, and this guy shows up looking for a missing kid." Monroe paused, settling into his role as raconteur. "I had no idea he was a Grimm when I let him in."

Hank texted an hour later to say they were wrapping up. There was a smiley faced emoticon at the end which they collectively agreed was a good sign.

"Given Capra's record and the circumstances," Gebhard said, slurping the half-melted obnoxiously purple berry smoothie he'd picked out instead of coffee, "it's unlikely the prosecutor would even try. No one is going to want to be the one who brought charges against the hero cop who survived three days of imprisonment and, if you believe the news, grievous torture, then fought his way free." _Slurp_. "And there were the pictures and emails they found on Capra's laptop."

The pictures. God. He'd seen the pictures of Nick heavy-eyed and half conscious, obviously drugged, attached to emails to an overseas account. If Capra had lived to go to a trial the jury would have taken five minutes to convict him. As it was there was more than enough to send Capra's co-conspirators scrambling for plea deals.

Juliette grimaced down at the remnants of her Chai Spice Latte. She'd seen the pictures too.

"Do you suppose," Monroe mused, holding open the door to their floor, "I should get his autograph before all the media attention goes to his head?"

"Monroe!" Juliette exclaimed, attempting to sound scandalized and failing.

"What?" Monroe saw Hank by the vending machines as they rounded the corner. "I could sell it on EBay. Augment my specialty cheese budget."

Juliette dissolved into a severe giggling fit and he gave himself a little mental pat on the back for cheering her up.

"Do I even want to know?" Hank asked, coming up with a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup in one hand and a 7Up in the other.

"Let's just say," Juliette managed between giggles, "that if Nick's underwear starts showing up on EBay, I'll know who to blame." She looked pointedly in Monroe's direction.

Hank stared at her. Stared at Monroe. And reached the conclusion that, "Nope, I really _don't_ want to know." He waved a hello to Gebhard. "You should come in. Nick wanted to thank you all personally but you had already gone by the time he was conscious enough to form complete thoughts." He started back down the hall and the rest of them trailed after like ducklings.

"Did everyone leave already?" Juliette asked.

"Yep. Renard was going to hang around but he had an errand over in Seattle before driving back to Portland and the meeting ran longer than anticipated."

"So what's the verdict?" Monroe burst out.

"Capra's death was ruled as a non-criminal homicide. No other charges pending as far as Nick is concerned."

Gebhard broke into a big grin. "Told you."

"So that's good?"

"That's very good," Hank affirmed. "He'll be on paid leave for a few days while everything gets processed and filed but that should be over with by the time he gets off medical restrictions."

Back in the room, Hank handed over the 7Up to Nick but kept the candy for himself despite the soulful looks Nick gave it. "You can have one when you've finished your soda," he said clearly believing Nick wouldn't feel up to it.

"Nausea?" Gebhard asked, grabbing Nick's chart off the end of the bed.

"A little," Nick admitted.

"From the headache?"

"Probably yeah." He shifted a little, easing his shoulders down the pillow and sipped his 7Up. "It's sort of like the morning after hangover only without the fun."

Juliette tucked herself onto the bed next to him, making him shift over to make room. "Is it the same as the last time?" she asked Nick.

"Last time?" Gebhard asked, thumbing through the paperwork.

"The first time we met Capra shook my hand," Nick explained. "Gave me one hell of a headache for the rest of the day."

"And it made you act drunk," Monroe reminded him. "Don't forget that. He was talking nonsense and suffered from a bout of painfully bad judgment that involved DUZI. Driving-While-Under-_Ziegevolk_-Influence." He paused to enjoy the clever acronym then added, "Not that bad judgment is necessarily a rare thing. I mean there was that time with the _bouchon d'eau_—"

"Yes, thank you, Monroe!" Nick said loudly. "We all know _that_ story."

"I don't," Gebhard said, leaning back in his chair with a grin.

"Man, I had slime in places that slime should never go." Hank was methodically nibbling around the first cup, eating off all the chocolate scalloping before moving onto the peanut butter center. "Except the way I remember it, Monroe was the one who had a lapse in judgment."

"What?" Monroe yelped. "No way."

"That's _right_," Nick crowed. "It wasn't until you went all wolfie on the slug that the slug went all…explosively sluggie."

Hank grinned hugely. "See there was this water sprite—"

"An _undine_," Monroe interjected.

"Water sprite," Hank continued, "who came into the station to report a trespasser on the family property. They had twenty acres just outside of the city with a bit of creek and a pond and apparently someone had been coming in at night to use the pond for extracurricular activities."

"It was a slow week," Nick said, "and the Captain gave us the case."

"How'd that work out for you?" Gebhard asked with a smirk.

"She was a _little_ startled at first," Nick said. "But after we got over that bump in the road we were able to catch her night time skinny dipper."

Hank kicked his feet up on the end of Nick's bed. "Turns out he was some sort of water slug recently moved to the area. The local _hasslich_ where he'd lived before had used the abandoned quarry just over the hill from his lake as a toxic dumping ground. Polluted the hell out of the groundwater."

"Wait is this Maria and Phil you're talking about?" Juliette broke in. "You didn't tell me they met because she tried to have him arrested."

"I told you this story," Nick disagreed. "And she _did_ have him arrested. He spent a night in lockup before she dropped the charges."

Juliette poked him in the side making him jump and grab at her hand. "You did _not_ tell me that. You just said they had met when Maria came in to file a police report."

Nick dropped a kiss on her hand, insisting, "I told you she had a trespasser."

Monroe got up to grab one of the water bottles from the small cooler of drinks they'd shoved into the bathroom to keep from tripping over it. It was usually kept in Juliette's car for house calls but she'd brought it up after he'd complained about the tap water smelling strongly of chlorine. Last night's shower had left him tight-skinned and itchy and missing his expensive filtration system at home.

Straightening up he turned and found Gebhard had followed him and was now leaning against the wall watching Nick and Juliette do that sickeningly adorable thing they did when they argued without really arguing. There probably wouldn't be a real argument for months, or at least until the knowledge that they had literally been hours away from losing Nick faded a little.

"It's a nice little pack you've got here, Monroe," Gebhard said. "Strange but nice." He clapped Monroe on the shoulder hard enough he staggered. "See you later, _blutbad_," he added and grabbed his jacket off the chair, said his goodbyes, and headed out the door, leaving Hank with a business card and Monroe with his mouth hanging open.

Pack. He didn't. He should have….

Aw, hell

It made sense. Watching Nick trying to steal Hank's last peanut butter cup, Hank fending him off with a foot he remembered how he'd felt when they'd found out Nick was gone. The shock of anger when he'd heard that Capra had even _thought_ about going after Juliette. The way Hank had looked at him as he'd adjusted the straps on the Kevlar vest and told him to keep his head down and be safe. He'd been letting them into his territory, feeding them, watching over them, and he hadn't had that in so, so long.

"Hey, Monroe," Nick called, jolting him out of his thoughts.

He walked back over to his chair and took a seat. "I'm not helping you steal Hank's candy."

Nick rolled his eyes. "When do you have to be back for work?"

"Monday will be soon enough." He'd emptied his work box and wouldn't pick up more watches from the jewelers until Tuesday afternoon.

"My cousin has a summer house just down the coast from Seattle. He's in Arizona right now and he told me where the extra key is. Four bedrooms, ocean view. All we have to do is pick up some groceries on the way."

He glanced at Hank who was looking at Nick with a worried expression. Nick had his eyes closed and his head resting on Juliette's shoulder and it occurred to Monroe that he might not be ready to go home quite yet.

Juliette had kindly stopped by his house to pick up a change of clothes, meds, and a few other things he needed to survive away from home. Hank had the essentials from the duffle bag he'd brought along. He nodded thoughtfully. "I actually haven't been to the top of the Space Needle."

Nick smiled without opening his eyes and murmured. "We can't have that."

"It will be fun," Juliette said. "Like a big sleepover."

"Yeah," Hank chipped in, "we can watch scary movies and braid each other's hair."

Juliette laughed. "Don't be jealous just because Nick and I are the only ones with enough hair to braid."

"We could braid Monroe's beard," Nick said bringing out the big, happy smile that lit up his whole face.

"Don't mock the beard, man." He settled deeper into his chair, cracking open the water, and considered heading back to the motel for a nap. Sitting watch last night hadn't been particularly restful. He kept thinking he could smell _hexenbeist_ but hadn't seen anything and had eventually concluded he was having flashbacks to the first time he'd babysat his Grimm in the hospital.

"Beard envy," Hank said wisely. "It ain't pretty."

Nick grinned at him. "Is that a challenge? Because I'm pretty I was the one ahead in the beard category on that three-day Wickermen stakeout."

"That's not how I remember it," Hank said.

"They say the memory is the first thing to go."

On second thought, the nap could wait. He was quite comfortable where he was.

THE END

_**Notes:**_ This is the point where I get to say: **HOLY BUCK-TOOTHED EISBIBER, BATMAN, IT'S DONE! **I have an epilogue of sorts and a bonus chapter I'm going to attach to this story in a bit and a couple one-shots that will be attached to this particular alternate universe so keep an eye out for them.

Big, big, BIG thanks to everyone who read and special squirrel hugs to all of you who reviewed and gave helpful comments. As happy as I am to have finished this, it was really fun while it lasted.

* If you want to request a one-shot about a particular character or theme from the story send it on over. I don't promise anything but I'll give them a shot.


	14. Chapter 14 - Epilogue

_**Notes:**_ Renard deals with the men who came to buy his Grimm and sends a bloody message to his family overseas.

_**Warnings:**_ Hinted at violence and death. Use of kittens as weapons of annoyance.

() () ()

Sean had barely stepped off the aircraft steps onto wet tarmac before the steward raised the stairs and sealed the door. He smiled a little as he hurried towards his SUV. The threatening clouds had finally broken open, oozing a steady stream of cold rain with just enough wind to make it really uncomfortable.

"They seem to be in a hurry," Serena commented from where she was using the side of his vehicle as a windbreak, warm and dry in a knee-length cashmere coat.

Sean gave her large umbrella a sour look. "Can't imagine why," he replied dryly, opening the passenger door of the vehicle to place the aluminum briefcase on the floorboard. He stripped off his gloves and dropped them into the plastic bag she held out.

Serena raised her voice over the whine of jet engines. "Did you make your point?"

"I think my family will understand the message." Whether they heeded it or not would remain to be seen. He expected a phone call tomorrow.

She nodded and watched the airplane taxying away. "You have blood on your tie."

Sean sighed in aggravation and set to working it loose. The whole suit would have to go once he was at the hotel.

"You should have let us handle it," she scolded mildly.

"This was personal." They had come after someone under his protection. It was time to let them know he was serious. He shoved the tie in the bag as well.

"Oh, I can see that." She returned to a place in the sheltering bulk of the SUV, "I'm surprised you left the staff alive."

He smiled unpleasantly. "Someone had to remove the crime scene from my territory." And the staff, unlike Cousin Phillip, had no involvement beyond being part of the transportation.

"Shall I head back to Portland tonight?" Serena asked.

"No. I want you back at the hospital in Sultan. Make sure no one bothers the Grimm or his companions."

Serena shifted uneasily. "The _blutbad_ is already suspicious. And Camilla said there was a _jagerbar_ there this afternoon. You know how strong _their_ noses are."

"Then be more circumspect," Sean suggested. He'd had a long day of driving, standing around in the wet and cold explaining her job to her was not making him happy. "Watch them. Let me know when they leave town."

"Yes, sir." Serena disappeared into the rain with a click of high heels.

Sean tucked the plastic bag in next to the briefcase containing 1.5 million in US dollars that was supposed to buy a Grimm. There was also a rather nice 9mm Glock and silencer which he was keeping for some future use. His cousin has gone through so much trouble to bring an unregistered gun into the country it would be a shame to waste it.

According to the emails on Capra's laptop, part of the payment had been a one-way trip out of America and a clean identity. There had been no sign of any paperwork and Sean suspected the only way Capra would have disembarked was folded up in a suitcase on its way to the closest river. No loose ends could have been the family motto.

Sean climbed into the driver's seat and started the car, turning the heat up. He had people monitoring air traffic control; they would make sure the Learjet reached its destination. For now he had 1.5 million of his family's money to disburse in ways guaranteed to annoy. A petty gesture, but disposing of his cousin had barely scratched the surface of his anger.

Perhaps a donation to the ASPCA in his brother Eric's name. For a start.

Lieutenant Perez had done that to _him_ once. It was with the best of intentions but still—God! He'd been inundated with animal paraphernalia and donations requests for _years_ afterwards. He'd had to keep the calendar of kittens and puppies hanging in his office for the rest of the year to avoid hurting her feelings.

Sean smiled broadly as he shifted into Drive and headed out of the airport, imagining his brother's face when he received twelve months of fuzzy animal adorableness at his private mailing address. With the size of the donation Sean intended to make, the calendars would never stop coming.

The End


	15. Chapter 15 - Bonus Chapter

_**Notes:**_ Bonus chapter!

_**Warnings:**_ Nothing much at all. Which is slightly disappointing, isn't it?

() () ()

Nick saved his progress and leaned back in his chair, attempting to stretch the ache out of his upper back and shoulders. He caught Hank watching him as he rested his arms for a minute and raised his eyebrows questioningly.

"I don't know about you," Hank said, "but I could use a break."

A week after being cleared for light duty things were slowly getting back to normal. Monroe had stopped calling six times a day, Hank wasn't hovering quite as much, and Renard had finally eased off on having people shadow him every time he went down the street for coffee. He'd stopped having to sleep with the light on and Juliette had stopped coming to find him every time he was out of the room for more than half an hour.

Tossing his pen on the desk, Nick rolled his head to ease the kink he'd developed from staring at the computer screen for too long and glanced at the clock. "I could eat."

They were neck deep in the FBI research of Billy Capra's financials, tracking deposits and filling out paperwork for warrants for the accounts the deposits came from. The cold case that had started this whole mess was technically solved with the arrest and arraignment of Lorena Mas but Nick felt he owed it to the murder victim's to find the missing relatives they had died searching for.

The original FBI investigation had looked at Capra for possible human trafficking but given how long it had taken him to set up his Grimm-for-sale contacts Nick doubted he'd actually been in the business. More likely they would add two more bodies to the tally when the investigation was over.

"Tacos?" Nick suggested.

Hank pulled a face. "Sandwiches?"

It was a three block walk to the little deli that served the best soup and sandwiches on this side of town. Nick glanced out the window. Clouds were massing in the distance but he figured they could make it over and back before the storm hit and the fresh air would be welcome. "Sounds good. Let's walk."

Hank began tidying up his desk, locking away the important bits. "Great. Let's get out of here before we get stuck with a lunch list for half the department."

"Too late," Nick said, nodding his head to where Renard was waving them into his office.

Hank groaned and went that direction. "What's up, boss? We were just headed out."

Renard held up a piece of paper. "I was wondering if either of you could enlighten me as to why I just received a fax from the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office requesting the loan of the Portland Police Department's psychic consultant?"

Nick looked up from shrugging into his jacket. "We have a psychic?"

Hank burst out laughing.

"Something you want to explain, Detective?" Renard asked sternly.

Hank nodded and waved a hand, indicating he needed a minute to pull himself together.

"When did we get a psychic?" Nick wanted to know. The idea wasn't as strange as it would have been half a year ago.

Hank collapsed onto a chair, giggling like a ten year old girl.

Renard sent a look to the ceiling. It was the same look he got whenever Nick and Wu's prank wars sort of _accidentally_ spilled into the rest of the station.

But that wasn't important right now. "Do we really have a psychic?" he asked.

Hank fell off the chair.

The End

_**Notes:**_ I have a couple more one shots in the works that will be attached to this series when I finish them. One more big, big thanks to everyone who stuck it out!


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